I confess, I am a sucker for podcast episodes where they talk about productivity apps/systems. It kind of feeds my addiction for such systems. And they all make me realize that I’m into these systems not necessarily because I need them but more because I’m a sucker for these apps. I also confess that I am ninety percent sure I can get by with just the Reminders app. Though, I like the extra features task managers like OmniFocus and Things can provide and the user interface of these app are much nicer. I don’t have big projects in my life, just things that I need to remember by a certain day. This is why it’s very easy for me to move in between systems because i have no projects, just little tasks here and there.

There, I’ve said it! ;)

Last night I decided to give another try at NIOH for ps4. Last night was the farthest I have ever gotten in this game. And still, this game it’s so difficult! I mean, at this point in my life what I want from a video game are good visuals and a story that’ll suck me in. I am not looking for big challenges anymore, I don’t have the time nor the attention span. Plus this game requires a level of strategy, I don’t like strategy, or at least not on this type of game. I just want to slice myself through and enjoy the story.

Last night I got to an area and died at least 10 times (laughing at myself here) before I quit, any little mistake would get me killed.

Nope! Not for me. Done! I quit!

I’m so sad though, I really want to play this game, but it’s aggravating and that makes it less fun. I want to have fun and enjoy the story, not get irritated and frustrated every second.

Well there’s that!

Loves and porridges.

I have a couple of places in the inter-webs where I like to hang out. These places currently are Twitter, Private Chats, Instagram (still) and Micro.blog.

I guess I understand people’s problems with Twitter, although I am not sure if it’s because I’m desensitized from most of these issues at this point but I don’t find it as bad (yet). Or perhaps, in a way, I have somehow tailored my Twitter experience/timeline in such a way that I don’t experience a lot of the problems Twitter may has, how knows. A benefit I’ve gotten from Twitter, if at all, is that I have met good people, some of them have become good friends, some have become an inspiration and gave me the courage to start blogging, I even found out about Micro.blog through Twitter of all places! Another thing I’ve noticed is that twitter has sort of become this place where you come across people with mutual interests and then those conversations move to private chats, whether that’s Slack or apps like Telegram. This is cool, I think, because then it becomes this group of nerds where we all share and talk about the things we like without all the noise from Twitter. I personally enjoy the group chats, people there are friendly and very helpful (or at least the ones I follow).

The place in the internet I enjoy the most thought, is definitely Micro.blog! Even when I first joined, I felt a little out of place. I guess as early adopters, most users are coders, developers, true writers that have been doing this for far longer than I have, to which I am not either of the above. And yet, I feel welcomed, this place has changed my view of what an online community should be. Not only encourages my blogging habits but I have come across with so many good content, blogs and people’s point of view on things that I wouldn’t have found it any other way. I love that I can be open about my thoughts and feelings without getting a snarky comment or a non-constructive criticism thrown at my face. If anything it’s a lot of understanding, compassion and good intended feedback. I have met great people — inspiring people — and I love hanging out with this group of good hearted nerds.

Sorry I am calling you all nerds. :)

When I first had the idea for this blog of mine was to always talk and share all the good things — positive things — not a place for any kind of negativity. However, I guess it’s okay to not be okay sometimes.

I’ve got many things to be grateful for, to be happy and proud of. I have a beautiful wife that I love and she loves me back. Two beautiful daughters, one will turn three in February and the other one is two months and a half old. I have a roof, food on my table and a decent job. And yet I have these feelings that I can’t seem to shake off my head lately.

My degree it’s in Science, a Bachelor of Science with coursework on General Biology, Molecular Biology and Chemistry. When I first moved to the States in 2008, I found my first job as a customer service agent at a call center. I remember I hated that job, granted, it did make me have to get into the language by talking to customers all day on the phone. But again, it wasn’t my calling, it wasn’t what I wanted to do — what I went to school for. Needless to say I has unhappy, miserable and depressed. That lasted about three years or so.

In July 2012, I was hired as a Laboratory Technician for a local company, for their plant sciences department. And I was extremely excited for this opportunity. Finally was doing what I always wanted, working in science and I was happy. I love the job, it made me feel proud about myself. I was always learning and growing both as a scientist and as a person. I met awesome people — brilliant people — made good friends and build up relationships. In five years I had worked in the areas of Biochemistry and Regulatory Sciences. I started as a laboratory Technician for R&D and in less than 2 years I had been promoted to Assistant Scientist. After 2 more years in R&D I worked as a Regulatory Assistant Scientist. It was a great company and place to work for but as we grew,things eventually changed, management changed, priorities changed and yet I was happy doing my job. As priorities changed so did the company’s vision and direction, they decided to do a “restructure” based on this new direction. Long story short, in September 5th, 2017 my position within the company was eliminated thus I was let go. Now I am no longer happy, more depressed than ever and a mix of anger, sadness and a little bit of betrayal. I think,until this day, I’m still dealing with some of that, like grieving in a way. Like I haven’t moved on.

As most of us know, job hunting can be a nightmare. Specially in the Biotechnology field, it’s a tough market, specially if you are not willing to relocate. At the time (and probably still) relocation wasn’t a option, that alone limited my chances. There aren’t that many Biotechnology companies in town. After many phone interviews and many many rejections I got an offer! On April 16, 2018 I was hired as a Quality Specialist for a new company in town, not science related but one that I could use my “quality assurance” skills. It’s been almost a year and it’s going well, I like the job just fine, I have met new people, new friends, new challenges and learning new things and skills. But… and not to disparage my current job but that feeling of proudness and self-worth I had, it isn’t quite there. I don’t feel like I’m miserable at the job but I often have these feelings of doubt. If this what I really want to do? Should I be doing something different? Or I just need time to move on and adjust to my new career? Is this the show?

These are some of the feelings I can’t seem to shake off my head lately. Sadly, at the moment, I don’t have any plans on how to go about this. Right now there are too many other things going on at the moment.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

🎥 Polar, we watched this movie last night. It’s like John Wick and The Punisher had a baby and was produced by Quentin Tarantino — loved it!

Unrelated: according to my DayOne, six years ago today, I got sprayed in the face with agrobacteria. Fun!

What’s worth keeping? I think this was the real issue I was probably trying to address on my last post.

Ever since I started “blogging”, I have been operating under the impression that everything I write needs a long term backup system. Everything and anything needs to be saved in some system and live forever in such system. Whether that’s iCloud or Dropbox. Does it really, thought? Is it that important? Is it necessary?

Maybe is not about saving everything, but rather what’s worth keeping. I think. The root cause for my issue here is that before Micro.blog, I was just making “long posts” (more than 280 characters). Perhaps that was me trying to treat my blog more like a “pro-blog”. And now that I am more active in microblogging and treating my blog more of a diary, I find myself posting more and more short posts (less than 280 characters). So, no, maybe not everything needs to be kept forever.

I think Simon Woods put it in the perspective for me;

…if I truly care about the things I am writing then I will go to the effort of attempting to maintain it.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I am still tryin to decide between Ulysses and iA Writer! When it’s not about tasks manager, its text editors. I have issues.

Ever since I started “blogging”, I have been operating under the impression that everything I write needs a long term backup system. Everything and anything needs to be saved in some system and live forever in such system. Whether that’s iCloud or Dropbox. Does it really, thought? Is it that important? Is it necessary?

Once it’s published does it needs to be retrievable, and of so, for what? I guess I can see the need to if I was writing for a “Pro” blog or a profesional news website. But maybe not for what I do. All I do is make believe anyway.

Right now my system consists on writing, publishing then whatever I published goes as an entry in Day One using IFTTT, after that I really don’t care what happens with the text.

It is always good to have good friends come over. Those that no matter the years and the life changes, they are always around. The kind of friends that celebrate those changes with you as if was theirs. The kind of friendship my wife (in her somewhat infinite wisdom) has always advise me to cultivate and nurture.

We had a good time today, they came over, they met baby Luna, we had pizza, beer and good conversations.

Back when I got my Play Station 4, whenever that was ago, the first game I played was NIOH. Actually, I remember buying the console specifically because both of this game and the announcement of the Final Fantasy VII remake. Anyway, I quickly stopped playing Nioh, I found it extremely difficult. But for some reason I kind of want to revisit it and try again.

Will see, I am still hooked up with Diablo 3 on the Nintendo Switch.

How to not give a fuck – Life Lessons

The Paradox of not giving a Fuck “I’m pretending I don’t give a fuck by saying “I don’t give a fuck”, and by putting that out there, I’m making a conscious decision to not give a fuck, but in doing so, I’m giving a fuck about not giving a fuck. Which means you give a fuck.” – Joe Rogan

Don’t remember how I came across this article but somehow it made it to my “read-it-later” pile (which usually it’s a note in the Notes.app). Anyhow, the more I read this quote the more it breaks my mind in some ways!

It’s seven fifteen, finally get to leave work and head home. Not before I stopped at my local Apple Store. I had “broken” my computer over the weekend and today was my appointment at the Genius Bar. Needless to say, my MacBook Pro is alive and kicking, all is good in the world, I’m heading home. I finally made it home, it’s around eight thirty, usually the girls are both asleep by now. As my normal Tuesday nights, I got out of the car, took the trash out, I hadn’t even closed the garage door when I get text from my wife asking if I had made it home. She was in the middle of taking a bath when baby Luna (2mo) started crying. I went in the house dropped all my stuff, grabbed Luna, I figured she was hungry so I start preparing her bottle of miracle grow. And, a soon as I got done with it, Marley (almost 3yo) shows up! “Papa I want milk”

Now it turns into a “divide-and-conquer” scenario. Luna’s milk is ready, my wife is done and she takes over. I go and prepare a bottle for Marley and head over to her room with her until she falls back asleep. She goes back to sleep and I go back to the living room to find out, Luna is still hungry, I prepare another bottle! And, as soon as I’m done preparing the second bottle, Marley, shoes up, again. Back to her room with her I go!

Now Marley is sound asleep, I don’t hear Luna crying anymore — it’s over!

Turns-out!!!

Now Luna is fighting her sleep and I take over. It is now it is a little pass ten o’clock and its finally over.

Fun times!

Can I have a glass of wine now, before bed?

Observation of Things and OmniFocus

When tons of items show up in the today view because the “when” date is today, it’s somewhat annoying to not be able to filter OUT items by tags. This is where OF can feel calmer. You can build perspectives to only see what you need to.

Although I am still experimenting with Todoist. I couldn’t agree more with this observation by Adrian

inessential: Today

Today wasn’t so bad. Sure, the enemies of democracy, the Constitution, rationality, compassion, national and international institutions, decency, competence, ethics, art, science, and truth itself — and of anyone who isn’t a white man — now darken the offices of power. But they haven’t done much yet. The bad days are still to come.

My loathing and contempt for President Trump feels complete — but it isn’t. It will continue to deepen.

20 Jan 2017

I remember this post very clearly. And I get a reminder every year about it.

Between here in Micro.blog and Twitter, I have come across some new-to-me “listening material”. Haven’t had the chance to listen to any of it yet but I’m looking forward to.

• Ear Candy by King’s X

• Look Alive by Guster

• Heard It In A Past Life by Maggie Rogers

• Outer Peace by Toro y Moi

A long time ago, I remember listening to The Talk Show, the special guest was Merlin Mann. I don’t remember exactly what was it about, but what I do remember was Merlin saying something about, you don’t wanna do anything computer related while having a holiday party.

I should have listened.

Last night, for whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea to restore my MacBook Pro. Some things weren’t working right and also I didn’t be wanting to be running a beta anymore. I have done this before, many times over, and still I did some research before going in. I don’t know exactly what I did, what I deleted that i should have or what, but things weren’t going great. I contacted apple through the support app, chatted with a gentleman called “Tim”, very nice guy. He tried to help me out the best he could, kept getting errors. Until the computer just went caput and when I tried to reinstall the software, there wasn’t a drive to install it to. So MacBook is a paperweight right now. Sad!

At least I knew in my heart I screwed up, something, not sure what but i did. Tim set me up with an appointment at the Genius Bar for Tuesday.

Yeah shouldn’t be messing around with my tech while I have been drinking. It was a delicious beer though!

I feel like I have totally forgotten about my photo challenge ! I did well for the month of December, for the most part. Shooting only with my Olympus 17mm. January started with my Panasonic/Leica 25mm but haven’t been shooting much recently. I have been craving going out and shot but it’s been almost impossible these days.

After having some thoughts this morning about whether or not I should go Googleless, I have taken some actions since. I have (or had) three gmail accounts and have closed two of them. These two are or were the least used ones. I still have the one I created probably about 10 years ago now. I was thinking maybe to keep yah one for nonessential things and maybe online orders and whatnot. For my personal email, just used my iCloud account and go from here.

Part of me thinks that go completely Googleless isn’t doable or realistic at this point but I might be wrong.

As part of my never ending ways to “improve” my digital life. One of the things I have been thinking about lately is to stop using Google services, specially for email. It has been in the back of my mind for awhile until this morning. I have listened to the latest episode of Micro Monday in which they sort of touched on this topic a little bit and that got me thinking about this again. So I started thinking about my options.

• Option one: I can continue using my iCloud email exclusively.

• Option two: A Fastmail account.

• Option three: Don’t do a thing.

Option one is probably the easiest one as far as, it’s already on going and it’s free. Option two is maybe the most effective but it comes at a cost. Option three would be the laziest way, I think.

And also the more I think about it, option three sounds better in some ways. There are so many things in my life that are attached to gmail. I feel like if I were to get rid of my gmail account(s) it would be a huge pain in the buttness. I’m afraid of braking things up, that I will forget about important things or something. The whole idea sound like a nightmare in some ways.

I don’t know, I need to think about this in length. But the idea of detached myself from google it’s very appealing.

It’s has been a discussion in this household, for the past day or so, about whether or not it’s okay to share pictures of our kids on social media or online in general. It is a strange thing for me to think about, mainly because it is something I have been doing for years and never found an issue with it until now. The way I think of it (or thought of it) is/was, I have friends and family back home that would like to see, not just the kids but us too, how are we doing, how are the kids doing and see them grow. Friends as family that they don’t necessarily have the means or the chance to travel and visit us or we just don’t visit them as often. But yeah I have shared pictures of my daughter Marley before and gotten a like from a total stranger, which it’s, kind of weird. But that never bothered me, “as much”. I am well aware that my instagram account is not private — yet — so that means that browsing and looking through my pictures is fair game I guess. I no longer share things on Facebook (or at least not directly), if I post pictures of my kids it’s either here in Micro.blog which it used to cross post to Facebook and still cross posts to Twitter and Mastodon, hm!, that seems like a lot of sharing.

My wife was suggesting perhaps to post pictures of them where their faces aren’t showing? To share the more personal ones directly with immediate family? For now I’m restraining myself from posting pictures of them showing their faces until I figure out exactly how am I going to approach this issue.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of me and Marley wearing our “watches” 😅⌚️🐼

I feel like I fiddle too much with my homescreen when I put some thought into it. Organizing, putting though on what I use the most and what not. Thinking about what looks “aesthetically pleasing”. Sometimes to accomplish this aesthetically pleasing environment I also sacrifice apps that I may find myself using most frequent.

The times it’s a “mess”, it is a mess that works, that it makes sense in my head and I don’t fiddle around as much. Which is why I don’t like sharing and talking about my homescreen a lot of times. It is very variable and inconsistent. Only think that has stayed consistent is the empty row at the top, something about that gives me some kind of… _peace of mind _? I don’t know! I’m just rambling now.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I finally took down the Christmas tree!

- Day off

- Shopping with the girls

- Getting a proper notebook for journaling

- Finding a good bottle of wine for cheap.

Nintendo of America:

Tales of Vesperia has been remastered in HD and filled with new Mystic Artes, new characters, expanded story and more! Get Tales of Vesperia - Definitive Edition on #NintendoSwitch today! t.co/XRi9LTQh4… pic.twitter.com/t115QdVpRP

I need this in my life, very much.

I haven’t rage quitted a game in a long long time, until, the other night! I am a huge Megaman junkie, I have been playing Megaman games for a long time and loved every single one of the games I’ve played. No matter how frustrating they can be at times, I love them all. I have recently acquired Megaman 11 for The Nintendo Switch, awesome fun game! It’s got that old school Megaman vibe that I know and love, at least to me, but with modern graphics. I have been enjoying this game so far until I got stuck! Yes stuck, can’t go any further, at all! Just can’t ! “You shall not pass!” kind of thing.

The mechanics of the stage are very frustrating, I tried for a good twenty minutes or so until I could take it anymore. Got frustrated and said Fuck it! It makes me sad because I was enjoying this game so much but the level of “difficulty” in this particular stage it’s taking all that fun away.

I may comeback at try again eventually, I am sure there is a plausible way to go through this particular stage but I just didn’t get to explore it in my frustration. I sometimes forgets that in games (or just like everything in life) I need to take a step back and think about it and then proceed.

However, we will see about that. I am currently knees deep into Diablo 3 and The Messenger. Both games are a lot of fun.

Anyway, here’s a screenshot of the stage I’m stuck at.

- Quality time with coworkers during a power outage

- All Day by Girl Talk

- Delicious Guinness

- On to a three day weekend

- Hugs with the girls before taking Marley to bed.