Saturday, July 4, 2015

June 2015 Entry



June was, as predicted, had a few challenges. Definitely a trying month, but not full of low moments thankfully.

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- A lot of stuff came from Amazon on the first. I was just surprised that the 3 separate orders came together. All good stuff regardless.


- A rare weekend off of work (that I didn't know about until late) was given to the workers of HER. While I did still go to HER on Saturday for an hour, I did start reaching out to a few friends to hang out. The rest of that day was making plans for Sunday. The plan was for me to meet a friend in Austin for a couple hours and then continue driving to hang out with other friends in San Antonio and stay there over night. The morning of Sunday, the Austin part of plans got cancelled unfortunately. I still left at my original time for Austin, but just went straight to San Antonio instead on the 7th.

On the way there, I was listening/watching to the Royal Rumble 2010 PPV from the WWE Network. I was only able to watch the first half of it as my phone gave me a temperature warning (first time I ever saw it) that it was too hot, which it was. The rest of the drive was listening to music. It made the 3 hour drive alone easier.

I ended up at my friend's home and was immediately greeted by her two dogs (one was new to me). We spent time catching up and trying to figure out what to do. I threw out the idea of doing an escape room there, but we weren't thrilled about the high price...even though we ended up spending more at Top Golf (my first time doing that). Sure, I could have done Top Golf in Houston, but it was fun doing this with my friend. We actually dubbed the day a celebration of our 10 years of friendship similarly to how I celebrated 15 years of friendship last month. This included just doing random things and reliving past memories like when we used to date.


I did request that we stop by and meet with another friend of mine in San Antonio. She had not seen him in years and it was her first time meeting his son. They had a good time playing together while I caught up with my friend. We wish he and his wife could have joined us for dinner, but maybe some other time.

We went hunting for a Colombian restaurant she had never been to, but it was closed. So we picked up some Mexican food that wasn't too far away and went back home to eat and watch the latest adaptation of Annie (I enjoyed it). While we had plans to go out and do more stuff after watching Annie, we were tired. Most likely due to being outside for a few hours at Top Golf and the heat getting to us. It was okay. I was fine with just chilling and playing with her and her dogs.

While the dogs were fun, they didn't make going to sleep easy. They were both constantly moving around all night. It was topped off by the new one peeing next to me on the bed. That...was definitely a thing, ha.

I left the next morning. I did get teary eyed saying bye to the dogs and my friend. While we didn't do much, it was a much needed break from the norm that I needed. It was great being able to spend time with a great friend as well.


- The American Dream Dusty Rhodes passed away on the 11th. That was very unexpected. He looked like he still had more to offer. He did leave a great legacy and inspired many. He will definitely not be forgotten. 



- Adding more to the collection pile, I finally bought a copy of Aeon Flux. It arrived on the 17th. I haven't watched all the extras on it yet though.


- For the second year in a row, a friend of mine held Teacher KaraokaaaYYYY! Most of those invited were teachers in some way, which is why I was there. I didn't go up on stage to sing this time however. I was just in the mood to be around good people and sing at from the table. It was a damn fun night though. I was there from beginning to end with one other friend from 8:30PM to 2:00AM. It has been a while since I did something like that, ha. This was also the first time since I've started having Thursdays off at work that was actually a good Thursday. Very thankful for this fun night.

One thing that did happen is that another friend brought up how 3-5 years ago that I "had game" because I talked to this girl that looked like a Kpop star. He has brought this up every year we had gone to Spotlight. We actually did the investigative thing this time and "stalked" my friends on Facebook. I originally thought he was talking about one of my exes since she almost fit his description. But then it popped into my head with one other possibility that it could have been. Showed him a few pictures of her and we had our winner, another friend of mine slash another friend's sister, ha. It was a cool moment that reveled in finally figuring out who this mystery person was.


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- Got some new amiibo this month. First two to arrive (the 3rd) were Pac-Man and Ness. Next was Shulk (the 22nd). Unfortunately, while this was a great get, I got it on eBay...and at a higher price that I should not have paid. I'm glad I got it, but yeah...I won't ever pay too much for an amiibo no matter how much I want it.



- When I was in San Antonio, I picked a Majora's Mask pin that my friend got from buying Code Name S.T.E.A.M. He had meant to give it to me the last few times he came to Houston, but he would either forget or our schedules wouldn't work. but I have it now and it is cool.


- The new DLC for Smash Bros was announced on the 14th. While Roy and Ryu were leaked earlier, it was still awesome to see the official announcement. I downloaded them the next day as the first day had the eShop full of traffic as expected. I didn't play Lucas, Roy, and Ryu right away, but I did go through each character a day at a time. It was cool to play as Lucas and Roy again. Ryu is very interesting. It's weird and awesome to see him as a playable character in Smash. 


- In a fun surprise, Nintendo announced the release Earthbound Beginnings for the Wii U Virtual Console. It's basically the original NES Mother game under a new name since it was never released in the US. I downloaded it, but I'm not sure when or if I'll even get around to it. We'll see.


- E3 was fun to watch. Nintendo didn't show off a lot of stuff this year compared to last, but a few games made it to my "to buy" list especially a new list of amiibo that I want. You can read my impressions of their Digital Event with the proceeding link.

https://www.facebook.com/WingedVoX/posts/838253259596009

- I also played and made a post on my impressions of the nine Nindie demos that were available during E3.

https://www.facebook.com/WingedVoX/posts/839285372826131

- The announcement of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Shenmue III were amazing. I really contemplated whether I should get a PS4 for at least Final Fantasy VII Remake. The reason I bought an original PSX was to play Final Fantasy VII so that would be a fitting set of circumstances.

- I have invested more time into Xenoblade Chronicles 3D this month. As of typing this, I'm at 38-40 hours. While I like it, I'd rather just watch the story now. I have hit a few points where I need to level up because my team wasn't strong enough, but unless it's critical to the story, I actually get tired doing some of the fights. But I am determined to beat the game within the next couple of months.


- At the beginning of the month, I used up my Club Nintendo coins to download 4 games; Super Mario Land, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Super Mario Bros., and Super Mario Bros. 3. It was mainly for collection purposes, but I do plan to play and beat all of them. I did get Super Mario Land out of the way first towards the end of June. It took maybe...40 minutes to beat. I still enjoyed. It had been decades since I last played it on actual Game Boy so it was good to go back to and beat.


- I bought another game that was played on Game Informer's Super Replay, Raw Danger. It came in on the 29th. I do plan to get a few more games that were played on Super Replay, but some are really rare and expensive. Plus I really want my favorites that they played, not all of them.


- I've said it many times before, but it's more of a reality now. I have been pulling back on content for my WingedVoX gaming account. It's going to continue that way before it eventually fades in time.

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-  On the 2nd, I had to deal with an angry customer over email. To be fair though, I did screw up at one point and did have to hand it over for Agent Ro to finish. I got very flustered and felt like crap. We've dealt with tough customers over the phone, over email, and in person, but this was the first time I really felt like a screw up. Not fun...

- The first of new agents in training started on the second as well. He named himself Agent Tiny. He and I got along well especially since he was a fellow wrestling fan (we started doing New Day claps together, ha). He was able to pick up things pretty well, but his biggest fault was that he was slow on his speech. It was something I had to remind him about several times. The players' time and our time is precious so he needed to get that information out faster to them. Unfortunately, he did leave us after a couple weeks for a job he applied for before working at HER. He had the potential to be a really good facilitator, but we'll never know now.

- I had mentioned before that I have bad traffic incidents that make me late to work. There was one day in particular (06.03.15) in which it took 100 minutes for me to get to work...and almost the same amount of time going home. Had it just been going to work, that's fine. But hitting bad traffic on the way home, that sucked.

- We had our 1 Year Anniversary last month. During the beginning, we had a fun time answering questions from a hat and eating dinner. I actually put that video together for the agents to watch or listen to again if they wanted to on the 5th. It was a long video (over an hour). I didn't do any fancy editing (increased the volume mostly), but I did spend a good hour on 10-15 minutes into 15 seconds. I actually was pretty proud of that and think it looks cool. I doubt any of them got to see it though.

- Agent Ro ordered company shirts for all the agents. They're cool and comfortable. I want more of them and possibly different versions (like with the lock logo on the sleeve or back etc).


- We were going to have a corporate booking on a Monday (06.15.15). Unfortunately, there was a flash flood warning. And more unfortunate for me, I met the heavy rainfall as I was on my way to work. During that time, Agent Ro was calling me and the other agents that were to work that day and the corporate team about possibly cancelling as we don't want anyone to risk going out in the bad weather. I was stuck in the rain for about 90 minutes and even lost a windshield wiper along the way. But we had cancelled that session. I did end up going to HER though to talk and show some 3rd room stuff to Agent Ro. Agent Z and Agent Scarlet were able to show up to do some work as well and it was good to see them despite the bad circumstances of the rain. It wasn't that bad weather-wise towards the end, but at least I got to talk to Agent Ro a bit more before he left.


- The flood warnings continued onto the 16th. Those that were to work that day were assigned to call and email customers informing them that we would be closed and offer rescheduling. It wasn't that bad to do, but it is disappointing to have to change the plans of others especially if they planned way ahead of time.

- We gained an extra agent in training on the 18th. This also fell on Agent Yeti's birthday.

https://instagram.com/p/4GKgB5IXfw/

- And two days later, it was Agent Ro's birthday.


- I forget when she started because I wasn't there for it, but we gained another agent in training. She is one of Agent Audrey's friends so I had met her when they went through Grandma's room, but didn't officially meet her until July.

- In another string of unfortunate work incidents, our a/c had been acting up. On the 27th, it was completely down. We tried to keep operations running by installing fans in almost every area of the building as well as providing bottles of water for our customers. While the customers all had fun, most did comment that it was hot. It was decided towards the middle of our bookings that we were just going to cancel the rest of our sessions so that the rest of our customers and the staff wouldn't have to suffer in the heat. We spent time calling up the last half of our bookings letting them know we were going to reschedule or refund them due to the inconvenience. Once we got that out of the way, we started to close down as normal.

I ended up blurting out that we needed to go to one of our competitors (the newest one) and try one of their rooms now that we had the rest of the day off. Everyone agreed and we bought tickets for an 8:30 session. We all met up there all wearing our HER shirts (we all thought it would be funny). The owners of this escape room had been through ours and recognized us (I was actually their facilitator). They were actually just coming back from dinner and didn't know they had a booking since we booked last minute, ha. Just like any other time we go to another escape room, we were all taking mental notes on how they had things set up and how they were running their operations.

After a few minutes, we were lead into our escape room. We made it out with 9 minutes left (if I remember correctly). Afterwards, we went to Tiger Den to eat and talk about the room. It definitely was like a typical escape room, but we all liked it. Some things were done were pretty clever, some were blah. I think we all liked that this was a smaller room for up to 6 people at most with only 45 minutes.

So while the day started really hot and unpleasant, it ended on a fun high note. Yay, unexpected team building, ha. My record for escape rooms is now 5 wins and 2 losses.


- The next day, the a/c was still down. We were hoping it would be fixed, but we prepared ourselves just in case. We basically handled it like we did for floods by calling and emailing customers from home offering rescheduling and refunds. I'd say about half of the customers were understanding, but I had the unfortunate "honor" of being told how we "handled this terribly," "messed up their plans," and "ruined my daughter's 17th birthday," and maybe a few other things. It's not like we were doing this on purpose, but yeah...that's how some of them felt.

I was hoping to probably go out and do stuff that day, but the emails and phone calls needed to be monitored throughout the entire day. I was able to at least get a few hours of Xenoblade Chronicles 3D in between handling calls and emails. But yeah, an interesting "off" day to say the least.

- I wasn't there the day it actually happened, but we had the Houston Chronicle come in and write an article on HER. I posted it on our social media outlets on the 29th. Please take some time and read it as it is something we were really proud of.

With an account: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/article/Escape-Room-brings-out-inner-Bond-MacGyver-6351406.php?cmpid=gsa-chron-result

Without an account: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzqBFEsLDgGhd2FLaDdYSUx0Mjg/view

- On the 30th, we had another agent in training join the team. Not only that, it was the official last day of the Library Club as our Agent Audrey was going to leave at the beginning of July. In honor of this day, Library Club members brought books to recreate a past photo we made. Agent Yeti also went out and got us bbq to eat for dinner. We didn't have a last session (due to cancelling on account of the flash flood) so we had lots of time to celebrate. I don't recall exactly how it was brought up, but we started asking which agent we would let eat us. It was hilarious. It was then followed up by the question of who we thought tasted the best, ha. And thanks to the dinner conversation we had, the Cannibal Club was born. After dinner, we tried our best to recreate our previous Library Club photo and have it slowly morph into a Cannibal Club photo, ha.


- A lot of work has been done on the 3rd room. I'm very proud of what Agent Z and Agent Scarlet have done. Those two have been absolutely amazing. There was one day that I walked into the 3rd room in the morning and could not help but smile and be giddy at what I saw. I immediately texted Agent Z about it. Later in the day, I bought both of the girls macarons and expressed how proud and happy I was of them. I did invite them to Teacher KaraokaaaYYYY and offered to pay for the meal and drinks as a form of thanks, but they already had prior commitments. I will eventually treat them out because they deserve it. Thank you, Agents Z and Scarlet.   

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- One odd thing that happened over the past couple of months, any time I used the words "catch up" with someone, that ends the conversation and there is no follow up. I can recall that happening 4+ times with different people. It is very weird. I don't know what to do about it, but I can't always be the one attempting to reach out to try and stay connected. Sure, I left a lot of people over time and that was my choice, but I left the door open to keep contact with the ones I really cared about. 

- I didn't need it, but I bought the extra Kiss My Lips album card of BoA (06.17.15). I didn't know I needed it until I randomly searched for it on eBay. I have it now. I am happy that I have it.


- For those that don't know, Jessica of Girls' Generation was forced out of the group last year. On the 22nd, a version of the latest SNSD music video Catch Me If You Can with Jessica was leaked online. I actually enjoyed it and smiled watching it. I was inspired to make an mp3 of her version for myself. In doing that, I also felt the urge to blend the music videos together. I made two versions; one with the version of Jessica overlaid on the one officially released and the other showing one video directly over the other for a direct comparison. I ended up sharing it online on my WingedVoX accounts since those accounts were originally for videos I made and not just games.

Each video had close to 200 views before I was given my first ever copyright strike claim on YouTube on the 24th. I had to take watch a video and take a short quiz over copyright claims in order to just use my YouTube account at all. That strike will go away by the end of the year. They also removed my video, the one that was a comparison. The other just had a warning on it, but I decided to delete that one myself just in case I was handed another strike. My video actually got pulled down days before the originally leaked video finally got pulled down as well.

That strike really hurt. While I knew I was risking copyright issues, I really wanted to make these videos and share them with SONEs. I also got "yelled" at for sharing it on Soshified (they weren't allowing the leaked video to be posted anywhere and I didn't know that before sharing) when I thought they would like it and understand that I made it out of love for my favorite member of the group. It reminded me that I am far removed from that fan base. Even the ones I became friends with, I barely speak to anymore.  Since it was received well by few and I was given a strike, it reminded me of why I quit making videos for personal purposes. This reassured that I shouldn't make any videos for myself and just do it for work, which have been doing until now. It was actually about 2 years since I made a video for myself. So...I will go back to not making videos for myself (unless proper inspiration comes its way) and enjoying Kpop the way I used to and had been reverting back to. 

- On a lighter note of SNSD, they're having their comeback in July. They look fantastic.


- What do I expect from July? Not too sure. Only thing for sure is the 3rd room at HER. Other than that, I have little to no expectations of things happening. June was very up and down. I'm at least hoping for more ups in July.

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



Take care. DFTBA.

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