Monday, September 2, 2019

August 2019 Entry

August 2019 Entry

August...what a month.

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- I had bought this spicy tteokboki a few months back, but finally ate it (08.04). I thought I had made it incorrectly at first, but once I added the sauce and rice, it was similar to other tteokboki I had. By the way, it was really spicy. It tasted good, but it was that hurt type of spicy. I didn't have any of the things you would have at hand for eating super spicy stuff (milk, bread, etc) so I ended up drinking and spitting tons of water and brushed my mouth multiple times. The thing was that I liked the taste of it. If it were less spicy, I'd buy more of it. And this was the lunch I had before going to work. 


- I had a hearing appointment at the beginning of the month (08.05). So much time was wasted. My appointment was at 9AM and was the second out of 3 patients there. Waited for one hour to see the doctor arrive at 10AM. Then he proceeded to see the first patient and then the third patient. He told me later that he did that on purpose because my hearing test would have taken the longest. Understandable, but I wish he had told me that instead of just doing it. I was done with my hearing tests at 11AM. Unfortunately I was late for other appointments and had to push my schedule back by at least 2 hours.

My follow up was on the 14th. It was as if the doctor saw me for the first time. He didn't seem to remember me and asked the same questions again before looking at my previous visit notes and the hearing test. I had mentioned how things were getting worse too pain-wise and how the medications were giving me headaches and he kind of shrugged it off. The nurse came in to do a flush on my ears. My left ear was bad so I knew this wouldn't help. And of course my right ear was flushed fine, but that wasn't needed. Basically after 15-20 minutes of trying to flush out my left ear (which gave me a really bad headache the next day), the nurse quit because she wasn't making any headway. I explained to her what I explained to the doctor about how this was treated previously and she seemed to have ignored it. We finished up and I was given more pages of multiple prescriptions to take again before another follow up. Instead of going to get the prescriptions right away, I talked to my mom about how I felt. She already knew that I didn't get a good vibe from the doctor and that I  felt he wasn't listening to my concerns and wanted to do whatever he wanted and have me spend money on way too many prescriptions. In the end, she listened and agreed with me to stop going to that doctor. As someone else put it "if you don't think your doctor is invested in you, they won't be invested in your best health." The result of everything was I lost money and my ears were in the same condition that they were before seeing that doctor. As of typing this (08.30.19), my ears feel the same, the hearing level is the same as it was, but there is less pain, which is great. I haven't seen another ENT, but I will find one if things get worse.

- Bought Batman: Hush and watched it about a week later (08.09, 08.15). It was okay. Not horrible, but not great. I was disappointed with the reveal of who Hush was. Everything else was fine though. Hard to recommend.


- With some extra days off, I took some time to not stream and just relax. Did some light cleaning and moved and organized a lot of computer files. Part of the time off was spent watching the live action Aladdin movie (08.27). I really enjoyed it. Aladdin is my favorite Disney animated movie so this was one live action adaptation was one I was looking forward to, however didn't watch it when it came out. Then I heard so many bad things about it that I just figured I'd get around to it and I did. Maybe it was all the negativity around it that set the bar low, but it was a fun movie for me. I recommend it.


- I had been talking to someone I met on a dating app for a couple weeks. It was interesting, but I was cautious as I had been mislead in the past. Plus the fact that they were overseas had me worried. But the conversations were...actual conversations. We got to know each other a bit and it was nice having someone new to talk to casually as friend. Unfortunately, the conversation died down and became non-existent. It might have been the time differences as I would wake up when she was going to sleep and vice versa. It was nice while it lasted.

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- SummerSlam was a great PPV as usual (08.11). The Fiend, oh my gosh...so dang good. I didn't watch TakeOver Toronto II until later in the week, which I rarely do, but that was fantastic as well.



- The Boss is back (08.12). Sasha Banks is now Super Saiyan God Super Sasha.


- Went to a WWE house show with a friend (08.18). We had a blast. Front row. Great matches from beginning to end. But this was the first time I took so many photos (over 100). I've been front row before so I don't know why I chose to take photos this time. 

Kevin Owens (w) VS Samoa Joe
Lacey Evans attacked Becky Lynch during her entrance
The IIconics VS Fire and Desire VS Asuka & Ember Moon (w)
Drake Maverick VS R-Truth (w)
Lacey Evans VS Becky Lynch (w)
Drew McIntyre VS Roman Reigns (w) in a street fight
24/7 shenanigans
Shinsuke Nakamura (w) vs Ali
Sami Zayn VS Aliester Black (w) VS Andrade (Braun Strowman beats up Zayn afterwards)
The New Day (w) VS The Revival
Charlotte Flair VS Bayley (w)
Randy Orton VS Kofi Kingston (w)

And this was the most interaction I've ever received from wrestlers. Got a high-five from Asuka (her hands were so soft for such a killer athlete). Got one from R-Truth and told another friend about it since that is his favorite wrestler. Got 2 high-fives from Becky Lynch. The first one was in passing and the second was her after I said "you're the Man" to her so she took a step back to give me another one. Fist bumped Roman Reigns. And I got to touch Xavier Woods' tag title. At some point, the little kids around us saw how I was getting up and standing by the rail for high-fives. So after intermission, they all bum rushed the rail after every match and that's why I stopped getting high-fives, ha. Great night of wrestling regardless. My friend and I both needed it and it was great catching up with him. 


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- I have now been working at HER for 5 years (08.09).

- It was a slow day, but it ended well (08.13). We had one booking towards the end of our shift so my coworker asked if he could leave early so I let him. But half of the family team came late due to going towards our Downtown location and then traffic. We basically had to wait for another hour. During that time, I offered them (if they had no extra plans) to beta test Mo's Safehouse for free. They were interested, but wanted to see how they felt after doing Dark Side of the Moon. They had a fun time escaping and were really amped to test Mo's Safehouse. I needed some time to get ready and prepare, but the first best test of Mo's Safehouse went well. They gave some great feedback and I did make a few minor changes in conjunction with what they mentioned. I was glad to finally have beta tested Mo's Safehouse at the Memorial location.

- We get phone calls all the time at work, but this phone call made me smile (08.20). A customer inquired about booking and I walked her through the process. She mentioned that there was a section for a discount and asked if there were any available. I laughed and said that since she kindly asked, I gave her one (the one with my Agent name). She said something along the lines of "no wonder you're 7012 because you are more than 1000 a good employee." It was the kindest thing I've been told over the phone at work.

- An acquaintance from the dance studio I used to go to contacted me about a month ago about coming to do one of our escape rooms. She ended up coming the day after her birthday and they had a lot of fun (08.24). I offered her team to beta test Mo's as well and that happened at the end of the month. They had a good time with it. Hopefully they'll come back for Naval Warfare in the near future.

This day was a good busy Saturday that had Agent Ocean and I there all night. I offered my last session to beta test Mo's as well and they also came at the end of the month to do it. Great to get these beta tests in and have some good customers come through.

Shout out to Agent Kay on her last day. The few times I interacted with her, she was always very kind and was easy to joke around with. Wishing you the best with your future endeavors.

- We had a busy week at the end of the month (08.26-31). Corporate sessions throughout the week and a busy Saturday with beta tests and a late night birthday. Great for business. Unfortunately I did have a blow up over some frustrations at work to the point that I was cussing out loud. If you know me, that's not a good thing. It was good to get it out, but bad that it has gotten to that point. Hopefully this will go away sooner rather than later. But the busy week was full of good customers that had a lot of fun and that was a good way to end the work month.

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- We started the month like we had been for the past half year with another Final Fantasy game with Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission (08.05). This became a one-off as I was not doing good at this game at all. Some people were interested in it and I can see why, but it wasn't my kind of game. I ended up watching all the cut scenes on YouTube.


- The first Demo Showcase of the month (08.07).
Aces of LuftWaffe - A fun shoot 'em up in a World War setting. 
Alternate Jake Hunter: DAEDALU: The Awakening of Golden Jazz - A point and click visual novel. Felt slow, but had a great art style.
GOD EATER 3 - Anime Monster Hunter. Easier to pick up with fast paced action.
Iris School of Wizardy - Continuing with our series of visual novels/dating sims. This was average.
Word Wheel by POWGI - A fun word based puzzle game where you need to use the letter in the middle of the wheel and its surrounding letters once. 

I ended up choosing 2 favorites from this batch; GOD EATER 3 and Word Wheel by POWGI. It was always tough for me to get into the Monster Hunter demos so GOD EATER 3 was a relief. Plus this was my first time playing anything of the series as my only interaction with the GOD EATER series was using characters that were part of Project X Zone 1 and 2. And I've always enjoyed the POWGI games. This one was very interesting, but the raid that happened during this really helped. They were joining in and trying to help me figure out words and that made it more fun.


- Originally, Last Mission was planned to be played for about a week. Since it ended up being a one-off, there was now more time to play Mario Tennis Aces (08.08-08.09). This was originally going to be a one-off without a real plan, but we got to play it twice to finish out the Adventure mode and then play some tournaments online and offline. I enjoyed it a lot. There were some really challenging parts that cropped up, but thankfully some of those could be skipped. Glad I got to play this.



 
- Our free game of the month was Realm Royale (08.12). Not a bad battle royale game. I was actually enjoying it a little more than Fortnite. The major downsides were the long load times and the game crashing quite a few times (mostly during squad mode).


-  We completed the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy by beating Trials & Tribulations (08.14, 08.16, 08.19). Similar with Justice For All, I planned finishing a case/cases each time. First day was the first two, the second day was the next two, and the final day was the last case. I'm always bad at remembering how long cases are...and I totally forgot that the last case goes on for about 10-11 hours. That was a lot of voice acting in one sitting. But if any other Phoenix Wright games release on the Switch and I stream them, I'm going to go with this type of plan. And I specifically planned to beat the final case on the 19th because I realized I beat the first game and second game on the 19th of the month. Those first two times were not planned and I didn't realize until shortly before I started to play Trials & Tribulations.



- Final Fantasy VIII Remastered got a release date (08.12). It's slated to come out early September. Unfortunately for Astral Chain, Final Fantasy VIII needs to take your spot on the schedule. Will I ever get to Astral Chain? I don't know. Ended up changing my reservation for it. But I am very excited to play Final Fantasy VIII again since the Playstation. I even found all the collectibles I had for the game (08.27). It was more than I remembered, ha. But I'll be showing those off in the streams.


- Our NES game of the month was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (08.21, 08.23). I had only beaten this game once on the 3DS in 2013.It was still challenging, but it went faster than before. This could have been a one-off, but after doing an 11 hour stream, I was fine with doing a few short ones. Plus this marked my 150th and 151st stream. I did some editing behind the scenes and created a new intro/outro template out of the moving pause screen y0nderboy created. And the plan for the intro/outro music will be changed every 50 streams. This time it is an instrumental version of Asuka's entrance theme and a piano cover of TWICE's FANCY.





- After the first stream of Zelda II, I went to make a new shelf/playlist for it. But I learned that there is a limit to how Twitch Shelves you can have. The limit is 30, but 4 of those are mandatory from Twitch (highlights, recent broadcasts, clips, and all videos). It's lame, but not the worst. I can rotate certain series in and out per month. But when the time comes, I will have consolidate some streams such as the Ace Attorney Trilogy all into one, which will make some previous links I post for collections obsolete.

- The eShop has sales all the time, but a recent one caught my eye. SUPERBEAT: XoNIC was 97% off (08.22). To do the math, the game is $39.99 physically and $29.99 digitally. The game was $0.89. So I ended up using some gold coins I had in my Nintendo account and got it for free. Not that this had been a game I really wanted to play for the longest time, but I always kept my eye on it since it was a rhythm game. This price was next to impossible to pass up. I downloaded it and the DLC that was free for it and have it currently scheduled to play in December this year.


- Second Demo Showcase of the month (08.26).
Assault on Metaltron - A colorful and interesting tower defense game. Would have been interesting to try multiplayer on it.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 - A builder game similar to the first DQB demo. Slow to start, but it was not bad. I get why others like it.
Guns of Mercy: Rangers Edition - A fun arcade shooter (similar to one where you shoot bubbles with hook shots, don't remember the name). Awesome music and easy to pick up game play.
Hob: The Definitive Edition - A gorgeous adventure game similar to Zelda.
Worldend Syndrome - Another visual novel game. Excellent voice work and art style and story. 

This was a solid Demo Showcase. I enjoyed each game we tried. It was tough to choose between the last 3 demos as my favorite. Were we able to download Guns of Mercy earlier when it originally came out, this title might have been our overall favorite. It would have been Worldend Syndrome, but I have an idea for all the visual novel games we've been trying (I was tempted to continue playing it off stream, but did not). And I knew it was Hob when I was playing it. It almost instantly grabbed my attention in terms of visual and game play. I also recall reading brief impressions about the game online and I see what the buzz was about now. I plan to buy Hob at some point. It is currently scheduled to be played in December this year.



This was also the first Demo Showcase that I used the new custom thumbnail for. For a while, I didn't like that all Demo Showcases weren't given a proper screen shot. So just like the new intro/outro template, I'm using it for Demo Showcases as well. I even went back and made them for previous Demo Showcases and that's why I know we're at 21 Demo Showcases. Didn't realize we had done so many already.
 
- amiibo count is now 132 (08.27).


- Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection was announced (08.27). I was always interested in the series, but never got around to playing them. Since it comes out at the end of January, I'm thinking to play each game towards the end of each month so it will last half a year.


- Finally played Gato Roboto (08.30). Downloaded it the day it was released, but never to around to it, but I'm glad to have finally played it. It's a simple Metroid style game, but you're a cat in a mech suit, ha. I was able to 100% complete the game in about 4 hours. It's a fun and simple adventure pulled off well that I would highly recommend. If I remember, I'd like to watch speed runs of this game. 



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- Tiffany Young - Magnetic Moon (MV)

- Gary - Purple Bikini (MV)

- Red Velvet - Umpah Umpah (MV)

- BabyVoX Stage Compilation

- August 1st...so much happened. While work was not incredibly stressful, it was lame that I had to pick up catering that was supposed to be delivered and they were late with preparing it. After bringing the food in to a group of hungry customers (hungry customers can be rough to handle), I finally checked my phone to see a text from one of my best friends...her cousin who was a friend of mine had passed away. She told me to keep it private at the time, but slowly I started seeing friends change their profile images on Facebook to pictures with him and leaving comments for him. Since I was still at work, my emotions were switching back and forth from taking care of customers and thinking about the news I received.

He was such a fun person to be around. He always made you feel welcome and knew how to have a good time with anyone he met. It was weird...I couldn't get myself to go to his wake or his funeral. To my recollection, he was the second friend I knew to pass away...and it's hard. Made me think about a lot of things in my life too. I did do something for him though. For my first stream of the month, I found my old Rockets jersey and wore it (he was a big basketball fan and enjoyed playing it for real) and dedicated the stream to him. While the stream itself was lackluster (FFX-2: Last Mission), it was a little fitting. I could hear him laughing at me and calling me a "scrub" for doing so bad at it, ha. I also found a panda related game on the eShop and showed that at the end of stream just for him. You will be missed by so many, Tony.

But August 1st was not over yet. I had gone to meet a friend like I had planned and...it it didn't end well. Nothing horrible happened, but things didn't turn out as planned. Not to get into all the details, but I needed to call my other best friend to hear a familiar voice and calm me down. I'm still friends with the friend I met up with, but we aren't talking as much as we used to.

And then, I went to go meet my mom at my aunt's. My mom's brothers were in town from Canada for a few days. It was good seeing after so long (last time was over a decade ago for their mom/my grandma's funeral). And it was good eating and catching up with my other cousins that were there. But...there was a long discussion about things just as I was about to leave. It was a long talk about things I already knew and new things brought to light about others. Keeping it private, but a lot of things could be happening after September is over. 

This was a lot to process in one day. It was heavy. And things might be happening in the near future that will effect so much. Heck, there is possibility that nothing will happen either and things will continue as is. But if anything does happen, life will be drastically adjusted.

- That's a wrap on August 2019. Thanks for reading and take care.


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."

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