Tuesday, July 1, 2014

June 2014 Entry

June. June was very memorable.

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- I know I didn't talk about work last month. There wasn't anything to report. I did mention the 3 month notice I put in. That 3 months has passed and I'm still there. I've been there for a year now. As much as I wanted to quit, it would have been an idiotic decision to do so since I couldn't find work elsewhere. I did not want to repeat history that happened 3-4 years ago when I first left. It cost me a lot.

- A fishing trip was planned at least a month or two ago to happen on the 7th. The plan got cancelled due to being the main planner getting sick. He fortunately got better and the fishing plan continued, but it was only him and myself just like last year.

We went out farther than usual. While I still wasn't able to catch a fish, I did catch 9 crabs. 210 minutes out there, we caught 13 crabs and my friend caught one catfish. On the ferry ride back, we actually played  4 Swords and Steel Diver Sub Wars on our 3DSs. Both were fun and we were both surprised with how much we got into Steel Diver. Unfortunately, we got caught in traffic on the way back, but that led to tons of catching up and silly conversations including talk about having to pee in a bottle while on the road, ha.



- Another friend and I had been trying to catch up with each other for a long time now and it finally happened on the 11th. We planned to eat at Zushi, but they were mysteriously closed. So we went to Nori (had not been there since her birthday a few years ago). We caught up and talked a lot about doing a Roast and mine in particular.

Then we went to her place to play games on the Wii U. First time we actually played games together. After she made her own Mii, we played Super Mario 3D World, Spin The Bottle: Bumpie's Party, and Nintendo Land. Good fun. She has huge dogs, ha.

- Met up with another friend on the 17th. She suggested Fat Bao (never been there before, very good food). Of course we caught up as usual and then we continued talking at Bite Macaron (first time for her being there). I was hoping my friend that owns the place would be there, but she wasn't. She and I still need to catch up.


- I was invited to a pre-screening of Transformers 4: Age of Extinction on the 25th. Wasn't planning to see it, but it was free. Met up with one of my dear friends and he and I finally got to have a talk session we'd been wanting to have for weeks. It really felt good. That talk continued on the car ride. We met our third party member at the theater around 5 and got to our place in line and waited. More talking occurred and we got our free passes close to 6. They let us into the theater at 7. Transformers then started at 7:30. The movie ended at 10.

As soon as the credits rolled, my friend whispered "let's get out of here." Yeah, we three did not enjoy the movie. As I tweeted out, Transformers 4 was not great. Some good parts, but a lot of unnecessary scenes and about an hour too long. Glad I didn't have to pay for it. Jeff Canata (formerly of The Totally Rad Show) did not like the movie as well.


- Caught up with another friend on the 27th over pizza and a puzzle. I tried getting her to come out to dinner earlier in the week, but she couldn't. But this was a good talk. I sucked at the puzzle, but the long talk (until 2AM) was a great.


- 2 WWE PPVs this month. Payback was fun and Money In The Bank was crazy. Reading stuff online in regards to wrestling, I feel like I'm watching a different product from them. Maybe I just don't complain that much. Yes, the wrestling business isn't perfect and it could be better, but I still enjoy it. If you don't or haven't for a long time, just stop watching.

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- I recently posted on my WingedVoX Facebook page that I'll be toning down on what I share on it. Basically, the content I've been posting there has drastically decreased. Instead of posting all the gaming related articles I'm interested, I'm mainly posting stuff I have to actually write about (reviews, Miiverse, etc). I'll still share some videos and articles from others, but just not as frequently. I will still retweet everything gaming related I like though. The analytics do look way better, but the participation and activity is still low. Still haven't reached 100 Likes since starting the page in 2012.

- E3 2014 was exciting. There's too much to mention, but all 3 big companies did great. If I were to rank them...Sony last, Microsoft second, and Nintendo first (because I'm biased). I only added a few games to my to-buy list, but I'm excited for more fun games.

- My RetroN 5 was finally delivered from Amazon. I was lucky to get in on the pre-orders in January. I took a lot of photos and posted my thoughts about it. Click the proceeding link to see if it's worth it for you.


- Imported Namco X Capcom for collection purposes. I really enjoyed Project X Zone and was always hoping that Namco X Capcom would come stateside, but it never did. But I at least now own a copy of it.


- Every Street Fighter fan should watch Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist. Everything (except the subtitles) was done tremendously well. I do hope they continue it or maybe do a new series based on other characters from the Street Fighter universe.


- Mega May ended last month and you read how psyched I was about it. I got around to playing the final offer, Mega Man Xtreme 2. That was a tough one. It was very good though. I just couldn't complete it in a few hours like I did the others (took a couple days).


- Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) - Review
I played a lot of Mario Kart 8. It actually hurt because I would hold the accelerator button down hard (didn't have to) for a long time. I did almost everything in that game. I got 3 Stars on all cups (the last few took a lot of tries). I did not get all the gold pieces or all the custom vehicle parts and I did not get all the stamps from beating all the Time Trial staff ghosts.

I did participate in 2 GameXplain world wide tournaments. Those were tough. Even though I got 116 and 123 coins at the end of 16 races, I was only around the halfway mark in the rankings. It was fun though. Same with playing with others online. Other than that, I think I'm done with the game. Took it out of the Wii U the day after the latest tournament.

Check out the highlight videos I uploaded from playing the game.


- It happened. I finally played Spin The Bottle: Bumpie's Party. I mentioned it above that I played it with a friend. She actually wanted to play it not knowing what it was, ha. I will say, it definitely is silly/awkward like videos have shown. We were stupified and giggling a lot while playing. I definitely want to play it again with more people.

- Wii Sports Club released Baseball and Boxing. And they offered free passes to play everything so I got to try Golf. Golf is way harder now. The Motion Plus means you need to be incredibly accurate with it, which I couldn't get a grasp on. Boxing works fine although you need to be super accurate as well if you're going to box online against others. Baseball is the best offline and online. That's my favorite out of the three. Tennis is probably the easiest for anyone to play while Bowling is still fun.

I did find out that the gyroscopes on my newer Wiimotes go off sync a lot. My older Wiimotes with the Motion Plus attached to them work way better.


- The free game I downloaded thanks to Mario Kart 8 was Pikmin 3. I started playing it on the 18th and beat it on the 29th. My first Pikmin game (not counting Nintendo Land or using Olimar in Brawl) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was a lot of charm and challenge and the game was amazingly gorgeous. That timer, man...that definitely adds to the challenge and that's the only issue I had with the game, which isn't even that bad. I think I'll be buying future Pikmin games from now on.


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A friend threw together a Teacher Karaoke party on the 12th. I didn't expect much from it other than just a fun karaoke gathering on a Thursday night. To my surprise, I was reunited with a friend I had not seen in 12-14 years. When my friend was introducing everyone to her, she stared at me and said "I think I know you" or "you look familiar." Yeah, we did know each other.

So other than singing, she and I were mainly catching up. It got to the point where she was hungry so we decided to bounce and leave karaoke early. A quick stop at HEB to get something for her ailing foot and then we went to House of Pies to eat and talk more. We actually established whether we were going to date or not that first night. The answer, no. It's okay. It was great catching up and realizing that while we've both gone through a lot in the 12-14 years of not seeing each other, we were back to how we were, instantly clicking. We reminisced a lot, which involved me having to remind her of a lot that we did. Mostly random adventures like "I want cookies. Let's get cookies" to much more. I even said that if she needs someone to have more random adventures with, I'm up for it. Great night for me and a happy birthday for her.

And then the random adventures started again on the 14th. Originally, I had typed out in detail what we did, but it was running long. So I'll just list out what we did over the course of 2 weekends. All days also had time to just chill.

06.14 - West Oaks Mall, Memorial City Mall, Panda Express, 429, dinner
06.15 - Bean Boozled
06.19 - Lakewood - Hope & Faith/Love (Hillsong), Pink Berry, Nachos
06.20 - Original OKRA Charity Saloon/FYP, 429 Homeless Donation, almost getting hit by a car, Lakewood - Hope & Faith/Love (Hillsong and service), Pho 24
06.21 - Shopping, 429, Applebee's
06.22 - Sally's, Mall, Phoenicia, Dinner, Hair Dye (the dark blue is too dark to see unfortunately)
06.27 - Talk



Living 7-10 minutes away helps with getting together to do stuff. Coincidentally, we work about 10 minutes from each other as well. But we had to pump the breaks on our adventures for a while as she has gotten busy with church stuff. We both knew that was going to happen, but I'm looking forward to the adventures starting back up again. It was probably good timing since we wanted to squelch dating rumors (I know I've been asked, don't know about her). My parents even questioned if we were dating since they saw her a lot (we both have told them we weren't).

Another thing, my spiritual side has been reawakened. I'm not religious, but I do believe in things. My friend could tell that I had a spiritual side to me. That combined with going to church has definitely made me more emotional whether it's good or not.

Thing is, I just haven't interacted with anyone like that in a long time. Doing random things, hanging out a lot, talking and texting on a daily basis...I haven't done that with anyone in years. I don't even talk to my close friends on a daily basis. So having reunited with her is great and I'm glad she's back in my life (as a friend).

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- I wrote a post on my Facebook (06.12) about quitting as a videographer. It had been something I thought about for a while now. I even talked to a close friend before posting it just to get an opinion beforehand. While he wasn't thrilled to hear it, he encouraged me to do what I needed to do. I posted a few reasons why (there's a lot) I quit and did thank those who supported me and were in any of my videos. Plus I linked 10 videos I am still proud of so it's not like I can't watch any of them anymore.


One thing I was surprised by was the lack of response I got from it (not to discredit those that did). But I chalk it up to not many noticing my Facebook posts since I normally just post videos rather than type out things. But it does speak to how the support was in my videographer career. The important thing is that it is done. Only a big opportunity will ever make me want to professionally do this again.

I did sell one of my video cameras, my Sony NEX-VG10 (last video camera I bought back in 2011). The plan was to ask my coworkers first before going to Facebook to see if anyone else was interested. Thankfully one coworker was. I let him try it out for the weekend and he liked it. So he got the friend discount which was almost half off plus an extra battery, memory card, and carrying bag. I'm getting biweekly installments until it is paid off. It felt good selling it and knowing it is getting more use out of it with someone else. Will I sell more equipment? Maybe, we'll see.


- The World Cup does have a lot of the world talking. I'm only keeping up with scores thanks to the desktop page of Twitter. At first I wasn't rooting for any team in particular, but when Japan VS Colombia was happening, I chose Colombia and I'm sticking with them for sentimental reasons.

And speaking of Colombia, I'll be going to the Colombian Festival (to celebrate Colombia's independence day) on July 20th with my friend/ex. She reminded me that we went to one when we were dating. I vaguely remember it. She said it rained and we left early. That jogged my memory a little. I'm glad she told me about it. I recently told her I missed Colombia. Maybe I should go back there some time.

- My Zotto Mola hat finally arrived on the 28th. I ordered it May 1st. The online shop did say it would take a while, but I didn't think it would take almost 2 months. I'm glad I finally have it though. It also came with a free Running Man key chain.


- I finished watching Invincible Youth 2. It originally aired in 2011, but I only saw a few episodes since some places weren't doing great in their subbing. Not that I got the best subtitles with what I watched, but at least I could see it.

Season 2 really could not live up to season 1. Not that it was horrible, but they got new hosts, lost members, and they retooled the show a couple times that it definitely wasn't what it used to be. My biggest take aways from this season was that I like Bora more now and that Suzy is dorky and awesome.

While we're on the subject of Korean variety shows, I'm also watching We Got Married since Yura (Girl's Day) is on it. And of course I'm still watching Running Man. Congratulations on 200 episodes.

- Last month I said my favorite 2NE1 song was Come Back Home. That has changed to Gotta Be You. Come Back Home is still an awesome song, but I think it's the rapping that makes me really like Gotta Be You.


And speaking of rapping, Hyomin's solo activities are kicking off. I actually like Overcome more than Nice Body. I'm hoping she at least performs Overcome a couple of times during her solo run.


Thank you for reading. Be healthy, be safe, be thankful, and be loved.


Take care. DFTBA.

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