Vernal - EP by Oscar Welsh

Blush by Maya Hawke

The Nintendo Shack

Questlove Supreme: Lin-Manuel Miranda

Yesterday I was on the phone with Apple Support. Even though I had performed factory resets to the Macbook Pro before, recently, I have had bad luck and screwing things up. This time around, I had decided to call Apple and get some professional help. If you are familiar with this process, you know that there is some downtime while waiting for things to happen, where the representative and I had some time to chat a bit. We were talking about the early days of the internet and how slow everything was, AOL, and all that fun stuff.

That conversation got me thinking about the differences in technology from when I grew up vs my girls' time growing up. I grew up having to get up from the couch to change channels. Having to deal with antennas on the roof. I remember when we first got cable, and it was the most fantastic thing ever. When we first got internet service in our house, dial-up internet, and coming back from school and logging into ICQ and or Messenger was the thing. Later it was getting DSL and that was the greatest thing ever! And so on and so forth, until today.

My girls will know nothing of that. All they know is that there is a magical box connected to the telly that shows cartoons, The Frozens, The Trolls, and The Spidermans. They don’t understand the concept of losing all that if the internet goes down. I remember one time Marley watching cartoons on the iPad, wifi only, we get in the car, we drive away from the house and the movie stops playing. She didn’t understand the reason or why her movie stopped playing. Now she knows. Luna, she’ll be two-years-old in a few days. She grabs the Apple TV’s remote and talks to it, she still doesn’t get that she needs to press the Siri button but she has the basic concept. They both talk to try to talk to both Siri in the HomePod and/or Alexa. With Marley having better luck with that, of course, and for now. Luna, at almost 2yo, she understands and can “drive” and iPhone or iPad as if was part of her everyday thing.

I am not sure how bad if at all, this can be. Maybe is just a byproduct of the times and it is what it is. Also, I am curious to see where things will be going moving forward. New technologies will arise and how kids– my kids – will interact and grow with them.

Curiouser and curiouser.

We signed up for Apple One this week. It made sense for us, in between Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and iCloud Storage, we were already paying about 30.00 USD. The good thing is that we pay the same amount but we get billed once, rather than 10 USD now, 5 later and 15 thereafter. On top of that, we get the extra services. Now that I have Apple News +, I am making an effort to use it more. I have moved the app to my main screen and try to create a habit of using it. The problem I have is, I don’t trust the news, I am very skeptical. The headlines, seem sensationalist and very deceiving. I can’t stop but wonder, whether what I am about to read it’s true or not.

A long while ago, I wrote about a game I liked, Neon Abyss which I couldn’t have enough of that game. I played this game for months until I kind of got frustrated with it. I could not progress anymore in the game. I pretty much got stuck in a loop. Long-story-short, I needed to acquire a specific randomly-generated token from one of the dungeons to get to the current target, Ares. If you didn’t get the token, you would fight the 3 bosses previously beaten (Argus, Hal, and Zeus), and that was it, you’d have to start over. Other times I would access the token, only to die in one of the bosses fights.

Today, I decided to play the game for a bit, kind of like having a craving for a donut. I just wanted to play for a bit, whether I could progress in the game or not. Well, it turns out, I had the best run I could have had. I got the token early on in the game, managed to survive all three bosses, and beat Ares. Now I am to the next “manager”. That would be Athena.

It has been a hot minute since the last time I posted about the contents of my backpack. So I thought I would write about it, today of all days.

I am still rocking the Everyday Backpack by Peak Design. It has been over a year now since I got it and I am still very happy with it. It feels good to finally get to use it again now that I am back in the office. Its configuration has changed a bit since last I had posted.

The default is basically three inside compartments, I only have two setup now. The bottom compartment holds my Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III and the Olympus M.zuiko 45mm f 1.8 premium lens — always.

The top compartment holds, well, a bunch of stuff. Although I am yet to write much on it or at all, I carry a notebook with me at all times. Also in this compartment, you’ll find My Nintendo Switch and the Pro Controller, my work phone an iPhone 8, the iPad Pro 11” one or two spare face masks, an MK Scorpion Funko Pop figure, a pair of regular headphones for the Nintendo Switch, a pair of EarPods and my Powerbeats Pro. In addition to that, you might find some type of Tupperware constraining my breakfast for the day, usually oatmeal with peanut butter and a bit of brown sugar and a spoon.

On the top pocket, also located in the first-main compartment, I carry usually a small folding knife and my wallet.

On the sides of the backpack, in the inside pockets there are spaces for a lot of things but I usually just have pens, regular pens, and the Apple Pencil. Sometimes I may throw random things but I dot use these pockets as much. On the outside pockets of the backpack’s side, I usually stuck my coffee much in there as well as my key. On the other pocket, there’s usually a beanie hanging from it these days.

A day like today reminds me of those hurricane days back in Puerto Rico. Most of my experiences with hurricanes were an overnight thing, that’s when usually hurricanes would pass by our location. You would go to bed, hoping for the best, praying, and find whatever surprise in the morning. Maybe nothing major happened, or perhaps total destruction happened, it was very uncertain. Today, feels like that, hoping for the best but suspecting the worse, and hopefully, the worse will never come to happen – at all.

A casual conversation on a nerdy iMessage chat.

Me: New rollerblades (•.•)/

Mr. Donny:

“The custom anodized aluminum process, really makes them glisten in the sun as you stream down the road. We’ve worked tirelessly to develop a custom shock absorbing technology that makes it feel like you’re skating on air. In fact we are so courageous that we’ve completely removed the wheels. The new blades will start at $700 and you can purchase wheels for $300 each, if you still want them.”

*streak not stream

Me: 💀 😂