Tuesday, September 1, 2015

August 2015 Entry



A lot happened in August.

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- In honor of 3 childhood heroes, thank you.  

- On the 11th, it rained pretty bad. I was at work when it happened. I believe the lights flickered once, but nothing else happened. On the drive home, I did notice a few traffic lights being out. And as I pulled into my neighborhood, all the lights were out. Mom said the power had been out since 6PM. I asked if she wanted to go to our cousin's home nearby, but she didn't want to. I checked a few things online with my phone before it was close to being an empty battery. So that night was tough to sleep in as it was really hot. I did manage to get some sleep by putting the Child of Light OST on via my iPod. I did wake up almost every 60-90 minutes though.

When I got up the next day, I charged my phone with my car charger as well as my mom's. I left an hour early for work that day just because there was no reason for me to wait around without any power when I could do anything I needed there. Mom told me the power came back on around noon.

- DC re-released 6 of their animated movies with the comic it was based on. At first, I wasn't going to buy them, but they were a good deal. I haven't opened them ever since I got them (08.12).


- Saw some anime series pop up online on the 14th. (I think someone I follow on Twitter talked about it). Bikini Warriors is about the silly tropes that happen in RPGs. each episode is around 5 minutes so they're easy to digest.  

- A coworker helps put together music shows for local bands/musicians in Houston. I did want to go to one before that she hyped up, but was too tired after work that day. But I knew I'd go to one of her shows some day to show her support. I invited another coworker and we went to The Joint Show after work (08.15). We stuck around for 2 hours, met up with our coworker, talked to a local artist, watched 2 performances (Colombo and Genesis Blue), saw some improv, coworker bought art from the artist we spoke to earlier, found our other coworker, and then left. It was fun.


- New shirt (08.17). 

- Last year was my year of buying hats. I had not bought any new hats until there was a new deal on Running Man hats. These hats came in on the 19th. I ordered 3, but you will only see 2 in the photo as the other one is a present that I have yet to give.


- NXT Takeover Brooklyn happened on the 22nd. I was working that day and even went out with coworkers after hours. But on the ride home, I made sure to switch my phone to the WWE Network to see/listen to what I can of the replay. "Blue Pants City" was the first thing I heard and that set the tone of it for me. Every match was so good. I had to catch Liger VS Breeze the next day as that was the only match I missed, but I watched everything else late into the night. While the NXT Title Ladder Match between Owens and Balor was great, the ladies should have gone on last. Bayley challenging Sasha Banks for the NXT Women's Championship was absolutely amazing. Everything about it from the lead up, the promo package, their entrances, the match itself, and the curtain call in the end...so damn good. I literally cried seeing Bayely get the pin over Sasha Banks and I still get teary eyed every time I rewatch it. Women's wrestling is at an all time high and it is unbelievable to witness. Thank you to the Four Horsewomen of NXT; Charlotte, Bayley, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch. Paige could be the 5th of that group contributing to great matches.



- The next day (08.23) was SummerSlam. So much wrestling. Again, I listened/watched what I could on my way back home from work and watched the rest of the replay when I got home. It was really entertaining with a great crowd. Pretty much every match was fun to watch. Cena and Rollins was great with an odd finish. Lesnar and Undertaker had a hell of a battle with a wonky ending. Sets up the rubber match, but it was still a weird way to book the finish. The next night of RAW had a lot of surprises though. Sting!

- For some reason, I felt like watching all the cutscenes from Injustice: Gods Among Us. I remember really liking those and still consider them the best part of that fighting game. Thanks to people putting the scenes together on YouTube, I watched all of them again on the 26th. It basically is the length of a DC animated movie. It was fun to watch again.


- After a visit to UH (boy, has that place changed), I went to visit my friend who owns Bite Macarons. It was a slow day for them so we actually had a lot of time to talk. We ended up making dinner plans for Buffalo Wild Wings. Just caught up and went through more memories we've accumulated over 15 years. She definitely is one of the sweetest people I know. Thank you.


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- In amiibo news for me, I actually woke up early and stood in line at my GameStop to reserve the Retro 3 Pack of amiibo (08.08). I was 10th in line out of what seemed to be 15. They had more than enough reservations to go around. I'm just glad to have secured it for myself.


During PAX (27th), a Shovel Knight amiibo was announced. Definitely getting one.


And the next day, wave 5B of amiibo were released via Target for preorder. I was able to preorder Ganondorf, Zero Suit Samus, and the Classic Mario 30th Anniversary amiibo.  

- A friend and I were talking online about light gun games. That made me wonder about the ones released on the Wii. There were 3 (4) I wanted to add to my collection. Thanks to eBay, I was able to get Gunblade NY & LA Machine Guns (2-in-1), Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, and Dead Space: Extraction. The first 2 mentioned arrived on the 19th while it took another week for me to win an auction for Extraction (forgot to take a photo of it).

 

- I had used up my last coins from Club Nintendo a while ago. On the 13th, I finally played Super Mario Bros. While I've beaten the game many times before, this run was to be done without warping. I also wanted to make sure I beat every fake King Koopa with fireballs. It took a good hour to do, but it felt good getting some old school gaming in.


- Next on the list of Club Nintendo games was Super Mario Bros. 3. Much like playing the original Mario, I played through without warping. Spent about 4 hours on the 20th beating this game from start to finish. I also wanted to beat each boss with a different suit every time. Some levels gave me more difficulty than I could remember. It was fun to relive.
  

- One of the Nindie titles finally released. I didn't get Runbow the day of since I had to work, but I bought it and played a bit of it the next day (08.28). While I was iffy about it after trying the demo, it got really good reviews. So far, I think they live up to them. I only have issues with online (game freezing and the lobby messing up), but when it works, it is great. Solo play is pretty challenging. I'm liking it.


- Along with Runbow, I also downloaded Sin & Punishment (Wii U, N64 VC). I was curious about it before when it was released on the Wii's Virtual Console, but I passed it up. And since I added Sin & Punishment: Star Successor to my collection, I felt compelled to get the original. I played it on the 30th and it is a tough game. It's supposedly short, but I died a lot and I'm only about 2/3 in. I'll come back to it some time to finish it off.


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- Took Agent Scarlet out (08.03) in thanks for everything she had done for us with the 3rd Room. She really is very integral as the room would not be the way it is now without her. This was also a good opportunity to get to know her better as there really wasn't much time to talk as she was doing any work. A very cool person.

- We had our first wedding proposal happen at HER on the 4th of August. We actually thought it was for someone else who called the same day an email asking about it was sent. The first one never happened, but this email inquiry did.

Agent Yeti was the one doing the email correspondence, but she wasn't scheduled to work during that time so I took the role of facilitator for the proposal. She did however create some generic posters that we can use for future proposals. I did change the briefing for Grandma's just a little to have it make sense. The day of, I also put the ring in the room.

It was only 4 people for the group as they didn't want strangers to join (so they bought all 10 spots). Everyone, except the one to be proposed to, were in on it. Once in the room, I helped them as much as I could to lead them to the ring. At first I wasn't going to help them, but they needed it. I pointed out where the ring would be as well as gave them a lot of extra hints as stealthily as I could so that the proposee wouldn't notice. I would make sure that her back was turned, there was a wall between us, point to where things lead to, and even typed out notes on my phone and showed it to the others.

The proposee actually got the key needed to open the box with the ring. The proposer cleverly then said "Let me open it. I haven't opened anything yet." That was actually true, ha. In there was the artifact/ring with a note on how to make it valuable. It was a small ruse as to her proposing to her girlfriend. I stopped the timer as we all watched on. It was very great to see.

After they got out, the other Agents on hand (except one in a room) were outside in the briefing room to congratulate the newly engaged couple. We also gave them an art piece that Agent Yeti bought that was signed by the Agents there that day (just as an extra gift  for them). This definitely was one of the big highlights for me working at HER. It ranks as the second best thing I was a part of with the pregnancy reveal still being at the top.

https://instagram.com/p/5_JNFpIXYJ/

- On August 6th, a few flash mob friends came through HER. I saw them at this year's Japan Festival and mentioned that I worked at an escape room. They mentioned that they were going to one in Niagra Falls. After they did that, they immediately signed up to do Mo's Safehouse at HER.

The day they came was a day off for me, but I wanted to be their observer. They got out and had a blast. We then went to Cafe 101 to eat and catch up. I also wanted to hear what they thought of our escape room compared to the one in Niagra Falls. It was good to get their feedback and just to catch up with them.


- The 8th marked one year when I had my interview at HER. The 9th was my one year anniversary. My life has definitely changed ever since then.

- Did some late night editing on the 16th.  I resynced one of the clues for one of the rooms and even uploaded it onto YouTube as a backup in case something craps out in the room.

- Agent Ro was in town earlier in the month, but left to only come back a short time later. He was mainly here to help get more of the 3rd Room done as well as be part of our new monthly meetings. Not everyone was available for the meeting (08.17), but it was still good. We did an activity in which we recited the rules and briefings to each other while giving notes to one another. It was an odd activity, but it was good to see each other actually give them.

After the meeting, all of us (minus one) went to a new escape room that just opened. They had been to HER before and recognized a few of us before realizing we all worked there. The room we went through was small, but okay. Definitely saw why the limit was 6 people (we asked before booking if we could have 7). We went to Starbucks after to talk about it. I think the general consensus was that we were more impressed with their lobby than their room. Thanks to the awesome team, my record for escape rooms is now 6-2.


Agent Ro and I went back to HER. I actually got car sick trying to type out an email for him, so I laid down for a while as he was doing an interview. Afterwards, we actually talked a lot about how things were going with the 3rd Room. I got to vent some frustrations I had with the project overall and we came to a reasonable solution on how to handle things. We also talked about general operations and how the staff were as well as a few other things. It was a good talk that got us both really motivated.

- It had been a long time since Agent Valentine had been at HER. So it was good to see her come in on the 19th to work on something for the 3rd Room. It wasn't something she could complete on one day so she had come in a few times throughout the next couple weeks. It is great to finally see that piece be worked on for the room.

https://instagram.com/p/6lee4mIXeZ/

- We had a weekend where a lot of staff members were out on vacation (leaving only 4 of us) so we had short days. We did spend those extra hours working on stuff for the 3rd Room. Although I did want some of us to go out to eat afterwards on the 22nd. Agent Blue chose Bombay Pizza and I believe neither he, Agent Gig, or I had been there before. We all liked what we had, but Agent Gig and I instantly regretted not getting larger sizes of our pizza, ha. On the way back to HER, Agent Blue and I joked around about how everything will be better with Agent Yeti being back the next day.  


- Agent Yeti returned on the 23rd. Agent Blue and I were continuing with our silly little joke about celebrating her return after being gone for just 2 days. We informed Agent Gig and Agent Pow-Popper what was going on. We also tried to schedule Agent Yeti to do the last session so that we can set up something for her. But priorities of the 3rd Room arose. In the end, it made sense for me to take her along to shop for things for the 3rd Room instead of another Agent since we knew what we were kind of looking for.

After coming back from Target with what we bought, Agent Blue went to go "move his car" while the rest of us were assembling new furniture and completing other tasks. What Agent Blue really did was go to Tout Suite to buy some cupcakes. He set those up in our conference room with a note for her. Once we finished up all our duties and were set to leave, we were turning off all the lights. Agent Yeti opened up the conference room door to turn those off and exclaimed "what is that?" We went in and thanked Agent Yeti for all that she does and that we missed her the last 2 days. We talked and shared some stories while eating cupcakes before leaving for the day.


- Came to HER (08.24) to open the door for a contractor to do work on lights and hang up some things in. He was a little later than scheduled, but thankfully he did arrive to do what needed to be done. I assisted when necessary, but otherwise I was cleaning and taking care emails and phone calls...and taking some time to catch up on StreetPasses. I had been at HER a lot on Mondays lately (our day off), but this was the first time in a while that I was able to leave early and be back home.

- Contacted Agent Scarlet about installing lights into the 3rd Room (spoilers, it was very dark). She was able to come in on the 29th. She consulted with Agent Yeti and myself before she and I ventured off to Home Depot and IKEA. It was great having Agent Scarlet's expertise in knowing what to get as I would just grab what I thought was necessary. And we both had fun getting "lost" in IKEA, ha.

When we got back, there was a situation going on at HER. I helped with what I could then with getting things squared away. Then I went back to assisting Agent Scarlet with the lights. I questioned her if we would be done today or if it had to extend to Sunday, but she was able to complete the task, yay.

We then went to find a good place to record an audio clue we're using for the 3rd Room. Unfortunately, the main building we use was occupied with customers and the noise was leaking through. We decided to try the basement area. Odd thing, there were burgers and fries strewn about on the stairs leading to the basement, ha. While the basement seemed better, we were both kind of questioning it. Regardless, we did a few takes of the dialogue and having fun with it (accents, silly voices, general goofiness in between takes). Listening back to it at the time, it sounded fine. I thanked Agent Scarlet and saw her off before going back to work.   

- We started a new schedule due to some of the Agents going back to school, the 30th marked the first Sunday I had off in a long time. I had always mentioned that I would take at least one Sunday off to watch wrestling, but I had not done that in a long time. And while this was a day off, I still did some work from home and it mainly involved editing.

First, I listened to the audio recording Agent Scarlet and I did the day before. While it was better than our original improvised dialogue, there was still a lot of noticeable echo that I could not remove. I compared the audio to old audio recordings I've done and knew we could do better. Agent Scarlet and I scheduled for another recording.

The other thing I worked on was the end game for the 3rd Room if a team does not escape. The main part was easy since I just had to overlay it. The part that took the longest was looking for the end game graphics, finding appropriate sounds, and putting all of those together for a small 5 second part at the end of the long video. It took a while to export out (twice since I added one simple thing after the first export). So I spent that time playing Runbow and Sin & Punishment. In the end, the video is good to go.

- Met up with Agent Scarlet at UH on the 31st. Our original idea of where to record wasn't going to work out since there was a lot of echo and background noise even though it had been used for recordings by others (wasn't good enough for me). We went around the building for a while looking for other areas before ending up in an alcove right at the doors of the theatre stage (which I feel like I've watched a performance before). More goofiness ensued during the recordings, but these went rather well and didn't take as long to complete with me being very satisfied with the sound quality. I thanked Agent Scarlet again for helping before heading out.

- The 3rd Room is progressing well, but definitely is not meeting any deadline for beta testing. I pushed it back so many times with the latest supposed to be during the first week of September. There are just so many things that are not ready. Saying that, things are being completed though. Everyone is contributing (time, finishing puzzles, miscellaneous tasks, etc). It's great seeing the team pull together in one way or another. Agent Yeti has definitely been integral in making sure things were on track and getting completed. But the little things (that are very important) are still delaying us from starting any earlier. Soon though, soon.   
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- SNSD - Lion Heart (MV)

- SNSD - You Think (MV)

Based on the videos alone, I liked You Think better. I also thought the song was better. Over time though, I really enjoyed Lion Heart a lot more. It might be because that's the song they're actually promoting and performing, but I do like it more than You Think now.

Oh, and Kwon Yuri...mm-hmm. She definitely has been my favorite during these promotions.


- One thing Agent Scarlet and I talked about when we went out at the beginning of the month was an old Nickelodeon show called. Roundhouse. It's pretty much sketch comedy with song and dance numbers. I have never met anyone that knew about that show and the fact that she knew the show was incredible. That night, I looked online to see if I could find episodes on YouTube. Someone had thankfully compiled (almost) every episode of the show throughout its four seasons on the air. Ripped all of them and proceeded to watch a few episodes a day.

Sure, some of the jokes were dated, but I still laughed. I really wasn't surprised that I could still quote certain jokes/episodes, sing some of the songs (didn't take long for me to start singing along with the main theme), and remember a lot of the dances they did. I waited until the last episode to attempt doing the dance at the end of the show. It was hard to resist especially since the steps were coming back to me. Did a lot of chair dancing until I did it for real. I wasn't perfect the first time, but I was fine on my third attempt.

I watched the final episode on the 14th meaning it took me about 10 days to watch all the episodes. This was definitely one of the highlights of August. And because of rewatching Roundhouse, I will now end every post they way they end the show.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsyxZA2SaLNWES2i_zQIcehkBL1vblcS_

- August was very busy and stressful. I am thankful for the positive moments that came along and those involved with those. September, let's go.

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





 
"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."

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