I am tired, in fact I am exhausted today. These days out in the field plus trying to adjust back to the morning work schedule again, it is taking a toll. I am having a hard time reminding myself that “hey, we go to bed no later than 9-9:30PM”. What I do is I stay up until 10-10:30PM or more, playing video games or watching a tv show, then I have to wake up at 4:00AM so I have time to get ready and be at work by 5:00AM.

The field work is what’s killing me at the moment. It is not like other fields I have been were I am just straight up walking back and forth gathering data. That’s how this one should have been but because of unforeseen circumstances, I couldn’t do my thing when I was supposed to. My task this week has been doing stand counts on a corn field and all the plants are at a height that just straight up walking and looking down won’t work. I have to squat down and walk. I have muscles in my thighs that I had forgotten I had 😅 At least my back isn’t hurting, I think I have done a pretty good job with keeping my posture the right way, my feet though, they’re another story.

I do have a pretty nice pair of hiking 🥾 boots, I did learned pretty early that high-end production-like boots aren’t good for this particular task. They are heavy and bulky, so I got hiking boots instead. They are light and far much more comfortable and still, my feet are hurting, I refuse to walk for the rest of the day today 🖕🏽

What’s sad about the whole thing is that I didn’t get to finish. Out of 510 rows, only managed to count 441 of them in three days with only 3 hours to work on that each day. Which means I need to finish on Monday. On the bright side, it is Friday so I’ll have time to rest properly over the weekend. And just to, in a couple of week down the road, comeback to the same field and get a different set of data. At least by then the plants will be full grown and it’ll be a lot easier.

Dang it, now that I think about it, I should have counted those hours as workouts with the Apple Watch. I mean, I was squatting after all. No? Okay…

We are getting buried under freeze-dried news reports and hot takes that make supermarket baloney feel like a prime cut.

Loved this piece by Om Malik, Write like a human which I cannot remember how I came across with it. Very spot on in regards to the type of blogs that I enjoy reading the most and how I approach my writing.

CrossCode on the Nintendo Switch

A fast-paced combat system. 16-bit SNES-style graphics with butter-smooth physics. Engaging puzzle mechanics, served with a gripping sci-fi story. That’s CrossCode.

— Nintendo

This game caught my attention solely because of the, as the description says, its 16-bit SNES-style graphics. Like I have said many times before I am a sucker for pixel art¹ so I gravitate towards these type of games very easily. The game is also available on GamePass, as a Free-to-play type of deal. Then again, this game called to be played on the Nintendo Switch, to me.

This game makes me think of many other games. The world of this game is setup as an MMO game, the main character is an Avatar within this game although it doesn’t seems like there is a “typical real-user” behind the avatar. I am sure there’s more to this story and I have only scratched the surface with barely a little over 3-hours of gameplay at the time of me typing this.

The game reminds me a lot of .hack//G.U.. Kind of the same setting, MMO-RPG game. That and also, Zelda, you get a lot of similar dungeon settings and various puzzles with little or no enemies at all. Or, your “outdoorsy-like” dungeons where you get to fight monsters, collect items, talk to NPCs and level up. You also have your towns where you can get side quests (there are lots and lots of side quests and I say yes to everything), trade and buy items, etc.

So far I am very intrigued by the story and where it’s going. The main character and how she came about is very interesting to me. There’s definitely something going on in this “virtual-world” and I want to find out more about it. In other words, I am hooked.

The game play is not very complicated and so far its been a lot of fun. The old school pixelated art it’s fantastic and the control mechanics are pretty smooth. Although this game is, again, also free-to-play on GamePass, it is definitely one of those you’d rather have it on the go. Especially since you’d be doing a lot of “grinding” for items and level points to acquire more skills.

I think of this games as if an MMO-like RPG Game (.hack//G.U.was my example), Zelda and maybe even Diablo 3, had a baby.

My only thing with the game so far, and again, I have just played a merely 3-hours, is that the environments (the ones I’va played so far), sometimes, seem like there’s too much going on and you might miss a thing or two. But also, trying to figure out how to get to an item that’s is clearly out in the open can be a nice challenge. Me, personally, if I can’t figure it out right away I’ll probably just say meh and skip it. I am more about smacking the shiat out off some hedgehogs and leveling up 😜