Friday, January 2, 2015

December 2014 Entry



There really wasn't much that happened in December. It was mostly work. But I'll highlight some things.

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- I got a few AJ Lee items. One was a Pop Vinyl figure. It finally became available again and I immediately ordered it and preordered a new shirt of hers (and got a $25 gift card that order). Although the figure didn't arrive at first. The gift card arrived in a small package with what should have been the figure. The envelope package was obviously too small for the figure. When I opened it, it was mistakenly packed with a Bella Twins bracelet...yeah, definitely the wrong item. Thankfully they sent the figure out and it arrived a week later. The shirt came shortly after.



The $25 gift card went to use later on. After watching the latest NXT PPV, NXT Takeover REvolution, I was pumped and excited. Here's my full quote I posted in a Facebook wrestling group I'm a part of.

"I wasn't able to watch this live, but I just finished it and damn was that a great two hours. From top to bottom, everyone shined and performed the hell out of themselves.

Kevin Owens, got goosebumps as soon as he walked on stage. Finn Balor's entrance and paint...holy sh!t. Charlotte and Sasha Banks showed what women's wrestling is all about and Charlotte showed some great intensity. Zayn and Neville; this is what you get when you put 2 great workers together, build a storyline properly, give them enough time in the ring, and have the crowd emotionally invested from start to finish. Applause and cheers for everyone involved in last night's show.

I'm so invested now with this amazing crop of talent that I splurged and pre-ordered an NXT replica title belt right after watching Takeover. NXT! NXT! NXT!"  

And that NXT title arrived a week later. Now I have 2 titles to carry with me to live events. Can't wait to take a badass picture with them.


And if I ever cosplay in the near future, it would be Finn Balor's NXT REvolution body paint. Videos of the entire entrance have been deleted off of YouTube unfortunately. It's still crazy amazing. I'd need help pulling it off, but I would definitely do it.


- I'm not sure when this happened, but my laptop no longer holds a charge. For the last few months, it was able to hold at least 20-25% of a charge. No more. It needs to be plugged in to be used. I used to take it daily to work, but I just use the PC there. I only use it for blu-rays and watching variety shows. It has served me well for the last 3-4 years. It shall forever be plugged in to be used.

- For the second year in a row, I was sick on Christmas day. I was starting to feel it a few days before and was trying to prevent it from happening, but the last day after work it all hit me at once. I was feeling okay, but texted the manager at work just in case. On the 28th, I felt okay, but not 100% for work. Although it went away once I got to work (maybe adrenaline). As the hours went by, the sickness caught up again and I ended up leaving work early. The goal at that point was to get better to go back into work the last few days of 2014.

- On the 27th, I received my copy of Girls' Generation Love & Peace Japan 3rd Tour on blu-ray. I wasn't sure when I'd watch it, but being sick was a good time to see it (12.29). It was very good and it did make me feel better while watching. Plus it was the last one that Jessica was a part of. I have their latest concert they did without her, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet.


- Throughout the year, I had been watching Ai Tenchi Muyo. I finished watching the last batch of episodes on the 31st. It was good to see the Tenchi crew back in action, but I wasn't impressed with the overall series. I didn't mind the short 3-5 minute episodes since they were easier to take in, but then they'd waste every 5th episode recapping the previous 4. The story itself felt lackluster and the large new cast wasn't that memorable. I'd recommend this to Tenchi fans, but not highly.  

- A really good friend invited me to his New Year's Eve Party a week before it was to happen. This was around the time I was sick so I had an extra reason to get better soon. Thankfully I was better and was able to attend.

I arrived early and helped with some of the set up. I also met my friend's girlfriend for the first time (congratulations). She's pretty cool. Then more people filtered in. While I greeted people who I had met at other parties he has thrown and met some other new faces, I mainly stuck with a few that I already knew well. I should have mingled a little more.

It was a very fun night. It felt good doing a countdown with others again. While I had been asked to dance during certain songs throughout the night (Michael Jackson songs, Gangnam Style, etc), I declined as I really didn't want to make others stop. But then I had the itch. I requested my friend play Apache and it was on. A lot were shocked that I was "actually" dancing and were wondering where I was earlier in the night (I danced in different areas, just not the main area). It felt good, but it took a lot out of me.

I also made a bold move to start off the new year even though I was nervous to do it. I'm doubting it will lead to anything, but confidence boosters are helpful. So helpful that I reached out to another friend just to wish a happy new year. But we both were of the same mind that we need to hang out more. I'm hoping that comes to fruition. 

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- My activities on my gaming account aren't as much as usual. Same goes for my gaming in general. So to cut back on a few things, my reviews are now shorter (bullet points and 1-2 paragraphs). I did 2 of those for the last 2 games I played in 2014.

- Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U) - Review

There really is nothing wrong with the Wii U Smash Bros. I just didn't invest much time into it. At least all the characters and stages are unlocked.


- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (3DS) -  Review

At first I was just going to buy this for collection purposes (digital only), but then I had the itch to play it. It's always great going back to these cases. This time I'm actually not using a walkthrough. Almost every time I used one whenever I would get stuck. This time I'm just going by memory and by paying more attention than usual. As of typing this (01.02), I'm on the 5th case of the first game.


- Games of 2014
https://www.facebook.com/WingedVoX/posts/747226608698675

Just like 2013, I made a list of my favorite games of 2014. While I had less time to play games towards the end of the year, I still played a lot. Hundreds of hours are spent just between a small handful of games. But 2014 was a fun gaming year for me. Looking forward to 2 Zelda games and a new StarFox game for 2015.

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- The Houston Escape Room, the place where I am most of the time now. It's been good to me. And if you didn't know, I'm behind most of their social media. I never used Instagram until now for them. So connect with us to see all the good stuff.

Our HER family is growing. We hired 2 new agents in training. They've been doing really well so far. I'm confident with their ability to reset the room and read the rules. They just need to expand more with other duties (briefing, debriefing, etc) as well as step up when handling the customers. They'll get there soon. But it definitely is great having more hands on deck.

Not only that, but the owner and his wife returned for the holidays. It was good to see their faces and have their energy around. I even made/requested that the owner read the rules at least once while he was here, ha.

And speaking of the holidays, myself and Agent K were put in charge of putting together our first ever HER Christmas Party. My main duties were to come up with the games we were going to play (because I had talked about what I had set up in previous years) as well as do online shopping for decorations. It felt really good as the decorations started arriving one by one. It has actually been many years since I did any Christmas decorating or even had a Christmas tree. I was really proud of how everything looked. The tree was the most problematic as the one I bought did not come with a stand. We had to create a make shift stand and it worked. I was feeling the Christmas magic once the tree stood tall and still.

The Christmas party was on the 19th. In preparation for it, I ordered an ugly (but awesome) sweater since we were supposed to do an ugly sweater contest. And I had a hair appointment that morning. Other than the planning and decorating, I also arranged to get a macaron tree from my friend's macaron shop.



The party was fun. For games, I chose 5 out of the 12-15 games I had set up in the past and they went over well. It was good for everyone (who some had never met until that night) to break out of their shells. Even after those, everyone was mingling well. I will admit, I felt a disconnect from out of nowhere. Negative thoughts of incidents in the past got in my head and I needed to talk to the owner just to vent. But that didn't ruin the night. Everyone had a great time and that was the point. Overall, a success.

On the 21st, I finally had a friend come through the room ever since I started working there. Funny thing is, I had not seen this friend in over a decade. She was visiting family for the holidays and enjoyed puzzles rooms and was overly excited to find out that Houston had one. We caught up for a little bit, but of course work doesn't allow for much talk time between the customers and agents. But it definitely was awesome to finally see a friend go through the room. Hopefully more will come soon as a lot have expressed interest (and I handed out quite a few business cards during the New Year's Eve party).

Something else happened on the 21st. We had our first team escape ever since moving to the new location. The owner happened to be there that day as well. Myself, the agent in training with me, Agent Z, and the owner all gave them a round of applause for being the first team to successfully escape. They finished with 3:22 left on the clock. While it was a cool moment, I was a little disappointed it happened. I wanted us to reach 100-0 before openly challenging people to beat the room. We were so close; 98-1.

It didn't stop there. We had our second team escape on the 28th. They were the 118th team to come through and they finished with 13:34 left. It's good to see teams finally win though. There was a lot of talk that no one being able to win was a bad thing. Even though I wanted to reach 100 wins, I still agreed. We had been consistently altering the room to help make things easier for teams to win. At least we're now at a point knowing that it is possible with how things are set up now.

While we're on the topic of rooms, our second room is very close to being ready to be alpha/beta tested. While the owner was here, he told us that he wanted us to test the room. He understood that we all wanted to just experience the room once it was done, but we also needed to have the room ready sooner than later for customers. I forget which day, but myself and the female agent in training went through it with the owner guiding us when we got stuck (because this wasn't an officially time tested session). We had fun and gave praise to some of the clever puzzles and set ups. I believe a few days later, I went through it again with the male agent in training when we didn't have a session scheduled. By that time, a few extra things were added and that was good to see. And of course we all gave feedback after all of us had gone through the room so that we can improve and have it ready. The second room should be ready for public alpha/beta testing in January. So if you've gone through the old room, you have a reason to come back to us now.

Another thing that happened while the owner was around was that he bought everyone on staff Christmas gifts. All the senior facilitators got the same gift, which was awesome...but half of us already had a 3DSXL. He felt bad, but we appreciated the thought because that is an awesome gift. But of course he told us we can exchange it since we had gift receipts. I returned mine a couple days later. We could only exchange it for a gift card at Target (where he bought it). I wasn't sure what to get so I only bought a $50 eShop card the day of. A couple days later, I just thought to check online for some online only deals. Good thing I did because I was able to purchase a few things off my Amazon wish list as well as a Figma figure I had my eyes on for a while (crazy to see Target have it and others for sale online). So the 3DSXL the owner bought was exchanged to get multiple awesome gifts so...thank you.



On the last day of the year, we had an unfortunate incident. We had a power outage due to an exposed wire being pulled. Sparks flew and the lights in the room (and several adjacent rooms) went out. I paused the game and got the key to escape in the dark and left to call the manager in. Unfortunately we had to get everyone out and hand out refunds/reschedulings. That also went for the team after who we called to tell them we had a power outage. Crazy situation, but at least no one got hurt and nothing else got damaged. We spent the next 30-60 minutes taking down all the Christmas decorations and I got to leave early for the New Year's Eve party. Not the best way to end the year at HER, but that can also be a good sign. I know some people perceive bad occurrences as a sign of good luck. I'm going to chalk this incident as one of those. I'm looking forward to bigger and better things for the Houston Escape Room in 2015.

And if I haven't said it in a previous post, I'm very happy with being part of the HER team. I can't recall ever being excited to go to work or even saying I was happy with my job. Here I am. Thank you, Houston Escape Room.

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- (EDIT 01.03.15: forgot to add this) One thing I did in 2014 was wear a hat every time I went out. Proud to say I only forgot to do this once throughout the entire year. I won't be retiring the hats, but I'm not going to be wearing them on a daily basis in 2015.

- 2014 was full of ups and downs. The biggest down was my grandmother passing away. I still think of her occasionally, but mostly for fond memories of a wonderful woman. The biggest up has been the Houston Escape Room. I can't thank the owner enough for letting me be part of this awesome team as they grow. I have no resolutions for 2015 as past resolutions never panned out. I will just take things as they come and take a few more calculated risks. You can bet that I'll be saying all the bad and good things that happen as I have done for the past few years here on this blog. And while I always thank you for reading, I really do mean it. Those that choose to read what happens in my life and care about it, thank you.

Thanks for reading. Be healthy, be safe, be thankful, and be loved.



Take care. DFTBA.

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