Quarter 2 2015 Notes

Work

Nothing much new to report from me over the second quarter of this year. My job continues to keep me really busy with the Philadelphia, PA branch office continuing to win numerous projects, both big and small in and around the city of Philadelphia. My workload increased in April as the office hired a new part-time assistant to myself and my co-worker and it’s been tough to supervise his work while taking care of my on-going responsibilities. It took the assistant awhile to get accustomed to his duties and is still making little mistakes here and there, but I feel the benefits of the assistant taking care of the frequent administrative tasks from me is starting to pay off a little.

Due to training and supervising the new part-time assistant, I have put my efforts in searching for a new job on hold. I plan on returning to the search a little bit in the near future. It’s not that my current job is bad, it’s that I am feeling lethargic about my responsibilities with my current employer. I hope that the new occupation that I’ll eventually land at will provide that change of place spark that I hope will be interesting and engaging work to perform.

Other Stuff

My birthday came and went in May, where I turned 30 years old this year. I felt like like my twenties went by in a flash. My brother and I went to a few places in Philly and in New Jersey. We visited Creep Records in the Northern Liberties section of Philly and ate some BBQ at the newly refurbished Khyber Pass Pub, which was formerly a music bar venue. To switch things up in the evening, we did our normal shopping up at Princeton, NJ, then wrapped up the day stopping by Halo Farm at Trenton, NJ for their ice cream. Otherwise, my birthday wasn’t special. I didn’t receive any gifts from friends and family (I actually spent everything over the day’s venture with my brother) and received a few birthday shout-outs from friends by Facebook, Skype, and Twitter.

The only other significant item I can share is that I started a separate blog at Wordpress as a place to work out my writing kinks and to post thoughts on certain video games (and other items) which I feel my opinion on it would be better served expressed out as a blog entry. I have been proactive on my writing since I started it, writing my extended thoughts on four games and a couple of offshoot entries. I do not expect to maintain this pace but I hope that my writing and thoughts are grammatically sound and interested to read. [I understand that I could have posted my output on Giant Bomb, but I decided not to to minimize notifications for those who follow me at the site.]

That pretty much wraps up my ongoings in Q2 2015.

Q2 2015 Gaming

After take a toll upon undertaking Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together in Q1, I took a different stance and focused on completing short games as a change of pace and to knockout games from the large backlog. It was definitely a nice change that I sorely need to restore some confidence and enjoyment of playing video games. I knocked out eight games in this quarter: Klonoa: Door to Phantomile; Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse; Sayonara Umihara Kamase+; Kid Icarus Uprising; Binary Domain; Splatoon; Alan Wake: American Nightmare; Driver: San Francisco. All games were enjoyable to play to a degree, some games more fun and memorable than others.

Along with the eight games I knocked out from my backlog, I also played sessions of a few games that continue to keep me entertained, such as Under Night In-Birth: Exe-Late, Guilty Gear Xrd, and a few other games. I still feel a bit frustrated that I have not put in the time to improve in UNIEL and Xrd (fighting games in general), but I am still enjoying my time with them even if I am not winning much. I hope there’s some unexpected breaks on the horizon where maybe I can try to level up at them. Splatoon’s multiplayer has been fun to play up since its release, though I wonder how much I’ll stick with it until my interest for it wanes.

Q2 2015 Items

Game Reviews

• Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse
• Kid Icarus Uprising
• Binary Domain
• Driver: San Francisco

Music Albums I Thought Were Awesome

• Bjork - Vulnicura
• Broadcast - HaHa Sound
• Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
• Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again
• Lightning Bolt - Fantasy Empire
• Mount Eerie - Sauna
• Shugo Tokumaru - L.S.T.
• Shugo Tokumaru - Night Light
• They Might Be Giants - Glean
• Torres - Sprinter
• Tribulation - The Children of the Night

Manga I Thought Were Awesome

• 7 Billion Needles #1-#4
• The Ancient Magus Bride #1
• The Angel of Elhamberg
• Black Lagoon #10

Q3 2015 Notes and Goals

Job Searching

As I stated above, I plan on resuming my hunt on landing a new occupation for the second half. It will be tough to stay committed to it as I always feel exhausted but I hope to land something.

Jury Duty?

I got my notice for potential jury duty this past week. I hope I do not get selected to serve on a jury but I do not like my chances of escaping this one. I’ll find out mid-August if I actually have to travel to Doylestown, PA for jury duty.

Attendance at Summer Jam

I always put this on my notes/goals list yearly at this time because I would like to have a few more FG tournament attendances under my belt. Summer Jam is coming up on the last weekend of August. I doubt if I ever compete at a tournament at all, but I’d like to be in the spectacle of the tournament by being there. Right now, I’d say it won’t happen but hope that changes. (If not Summer Jam, then Northeast Championships in December, which I’d prefer to go if I have a chance this year because it’s the biggest Philly FG major out of the three Big E runs yearly.)

Ongoing Writing

I have enjoyed my time writing out my thoughts on particular video games that I feel requires further explanation than a paragraph summary on it. I’ll try to mix up on the reactions of games that I plan on writing about to bring a nice overall spectrum of the good, the bad, and everything else. Plus, it’s a nice hobby to keep your mind occupied on focusing on an item to tinker around and publish.

The Next JRPG Trek

I think I had my fun in knocking out a bunch of short games and ready to take another lengthy JRPG journey. There is one game on my backlog that I think folks would be pretty surprised at me for not completing and I will rectify that in Q3. I hope to complete that game in time to tackle Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold toward the start of Q4.

Self-Health

I’ll end this quarterly blog on reminding myself to take better care of myself, whether it’s squeezing in exercises over a busy work week, eating healthier foods, not get overly stressed by work or other crazy matters, etc. I’m getting old and it’s going to get much harder to maintain good health.

End

Apologies for not having much to discuss, but thanks for reading nonetheless.