Green Juice!

It's no secret that my diet doesn't always consist of enough vegetables.  I've been in talks with friends who promote "green drinks" to supplement a lack of vegetable source in a diet, so I am going to start drinking them on a daily basis.  At first they recommended I try "green powder", but I couldn't find it easily at my local grocery store.  What I did find was this stuff called "Naked", which has a couple of green juice options full of fruits and leafy vegetables like spinach and kale.

Honestly the stuff doesn't taste that bad!  My goal is to drink an 8oz glass a day and see how it goes for me.  I also bought some steamable veggies that I can make as sides with my heavy meat diet in an effort to be more health conscious as I grow older.

Yeah I know, not a super exciting blog post this month, but I didn't really have anything else to report lately!  Anyway, here's to living a hopefully more healthy life! :)

It's time for another Bowling Ball!

In 2018, I bought another bowling ball, the Code Red by Storm Bowling.  While things started out slowly, I eventually learned how to take my game to the next level.  I attribute a lot of it to a change in leagues.  In 2020, there weren't enough teams in the IBM & Friends league anymore to hold a league, so we were invited to play in the other league on Thursday nights at Bowlero (on Broadway / Camino Seco).  Not only was I more motivated to bowl against new opponents, I also had new teammates who were bowling well and pushed me to try harder.  Here are the averages for the past 4 seasons with the Code Red:

As you can see, 180 to 200 is a huge jump.  I've been a 190+ bowler before and my best season before 2018 was a 193, but I definitely had a struggle for a few years.  In addition to bowling motivation in a new and bigger league, I think a lot has to do with a change in my approach, which I've improved over the last two years.  I have a better understanding of where to start my approach and finish the delivery.  I'm also able to read the lanes better and tell if I'm hitting the pocket light or heavy when I leave a 10-pin.

My expectations of myself are now higher than ever.  These days, if I don't bowl a 200, something is "wrong" and I'm expected to be better.  I don't think the bowling ball really changes the results, but it certainly can help.  I'll be changing my bowling ball every 4 years now and next up is the Infinite PhysiX from Storm Bowling.  $200 for the ball and $40 to get it drilled.

Here's hoping I can keep up the string of 200+ averages!

TwitchCon EU in Amsterdam!

In July, I traveled to Europe for the first time in over 20 years.  In fact the last time I went, I was way too young and I really only remember driving around in a Lego car at the Legoland in Denmark.  This visit was for TwitchCon in Amsterdam, their first convention since 2019 since they others were cancelled due to Covid.

Amsterdam, July 14-18:

The trip was mostly to meet and hang out with friends from Twitch from over the past few years.  I met up with three other streamers in Salt Lake City (Noglek, Spitfire0088, JaredMetalhead) and the four of us flew to Amsterdam on a 10-hour KLM flight.  When we arrived, we were greeted by our friends from Europe and east coast U.S. (IamFericho, Mizzmacs, NoctisLP, and CzarOmega).  It was super exciting to meet most of the people in person for the first time ever!

Almost all of us were staying at an AirBnB together, which is the way to go for big groups who travel together.  The convention itself was a little bit of a let down when compared to the ones I've been in California (San Jose, San Diego), with small space and not as many exhibitors/sponsors as I've seen in the past.  But I mostly just chalk that up to being in Europe and the first TwitchCon in 3 years.

Amsterdam is beautiful city and really well kept!  The streets are super clean.  If you go to Amsterdam central where the concave of the city is, it's absolutely gorgeous.  I loved seeing all the small canals around the city roads and buildings.  The Netherlands is not known for it's food, but their snacks are pretty good.  I especially enjoyed the dutch pancakes and as a group we tried some really cool flavors like smoked salmon and cream cheese, asian teriyaki chicken, and fried egg and bacon.

Amsterdam was the highlight of the trip and definitely my favorite part, since it was the time all 8 of us were all together and you know how the story goes, the more the merrier.  After Amsterdam, it was on to other countries, since I wanted to explore some of Europe since we paid so much for our flights out there...

Germany, July 18-20:

Driving to Germany was really cool, as it's true what they say about the autobahn that features no speed limit.  We had a rental car (Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross) that I was only able to max out around 105mph, but that was good enough for me.  Really fun to drive several miles at that speed. :)

When we arrived at Germany, we had a friend (NoctisLP) still with us and he basically showed us around two cities, Dusseldorf and Cologne.  Unfortunately the weather was really hot and humid those two days, which made walking around during the day pretty uncomfortable.  It didn't help that the AirBnB we stayed at didn't have air conditioning either, but I guess this is common in some European regions.

My favorite things about Germany were the food and beer!  I especially loved this breakfast meal called "mett", which is literally raw pork served on a half-roll and topped with fresh chopped white onions.  I guess the meat is taken from finer parts of the ham, so it's not dangerous to eat.  But of course, it would never fly in the U.S., which is why it was such a rare and exciting opportunity for me.  I also had a pork shank for dinner one of the days and you know I love the fatty meats around the bone!  The two beers I liked were Alt in Dusseldorf and Kolsch in Cologne, and apparenty the two cities rival each other, which I found interesting.

Belgium, July 21-22:

We drove through Belgium and spent a day in Antwerp, which was an absolutely beautiful city.  It was nice to have a viewer from Twitch show us around the city and be our tour guide for the day.  I tried a couple Belgian waffles, and while they were good maybe they were too hyped up for me.  Unfortunately we spent the whole day outside and barely spent any time at our AirBnB for the night, which was actually pretty cool being a section of castle (although the interior looks pretty normal).

As we exited Belgium, we toured Brussels and ended up doing a couple touristy things like Atomium and Mini Europa.  And I will admit I really loved the Lambic beer in Belgium, which is a very sour beer, but for me it was really easy to drink. :)

France, July 22-24:

It was a 3.5 hour drive from Brussels to Paris and we got in pretty late on Thursday night.  It was really stressful driving around Paris, their roads are literally webs of streets with no real order and some streets you have to merge across one another without any lines in the road.  As much as I hated driving in this city, I will admit it was a sight to see.  Probably the coolest architecture of all the countries we had seen so far.

We actually checked out Disneyland Paris on the first day, which had some noticeable differences compared to Diseyland in California, but I would say the parks are about 80% similar.  A few rides are different such as Ratatouille, Cars, and Indiana Jones.  We saw both parks (Magic Kingdom and Walt Disney Studios) in one day, so it was definitely a long day.  The final day in Paris we took it easy and drove around the Arc de Triumph, checked out the Eiffel Tower, and ended the night with a dinner cruise that traveled the Seine river and you could see so many cool attractions over the course of a fancy 2.5 hour boat ride.  I highly recommend doing this if you visit Paris.

 

I had a ton of fun in Europe, but I will admit that maybe I planned too many countries in the time we had.  I think part of that was because I wanted to see Paris, but we also wanted to experience our friend's country of Germany, and Belgium was just on the way.  If I go back, I would like to see less countries and spend more time in each.  Regardless, it was still a great trip and again, it's always the most fun to meet friends that I make on Twitch since it's such a big part of my life now.  Next up will be TwitchCon in San Diego come October, which is something I'm really looking forward to!

Final Fantasy Record Keeper (FFRK) - End of Service

This week I received some very disheartening news.  My favorite game on mobile that I've been playing ever since it was released is being shut down later this year. :(  I actually blogged about this 7 years ago when it first came out, and as an devoted Final Fantasy fan I was super excited when I finally got a chance to play it (it had been out in Japan a couple years before).

The game has had so much content added to it throughout the years, but as a Day 1 player who basically logged in every day and rarely missed any rewards, I've been able to keep up with all the challenges the developers have presented me.  It's not really surprising that the game is getting shut down, in fact I've only ever spent $30 on the game lifetime at the beginning, just wanting to support the developers for a game well produced.  It truly was Free-to-Play with not even a single ad, so I imagine it does not bring as much income in as other games.

Here's the screenshot of the End-of-Service notice they announced earlier this week:

So basically my favorite mobile game of all time will be gone after September of 2022. :( At first I was really sad and somewhat upset, since I've invested so much time and love into this game.  However, I've accepted that some things will just come to an end and have made the following goals for me to complete before it's all over.  Here are the things I still want to accomplish:

Magicite Dungeons - I've pretty much 5-starred all of the Magicite Dungeons (which means beating all 5 bosses in each element).  I still have Wind and Lightning to do, but had been saving those to do for "Dr. Mog's Homework".  This will be the easiest thing I have to do on the list.

Dreambreaker - So far I've only mastered FF7 and FF9 and have not attempted any of the others.  My gear in each FF realm is good enough where I should be able to master all of them, but getting sub 30-second clear times in each is probably not going to happen.  It's okay, the rewards for clearing them fast aren't necessary, although it's gonna take up a ton of Rat Tail for me to upgrade most of the Historia crystals needed to help defeat each boss.

Dragonking - This one might be difficult.  The only one I've attempted and completed (no mastery) is FF7.  But since I'll be setting up parties for all the Dreambreaker runs, it should help prepare me for the Dragonking bosses.  This section is the final and most difficult of the Cardia Records.

Labyrinth - This one is my least favorite, since it requires clicking through a "maze of portraits" to complete each dungeon.  The rewards are really good (hero artifacts are some of the strongest gear in the game you can wield), but the time required to farm them is not really worth it in my opinion.  I've skipped the elemental/realm bosses in the labyrinth up to this point, but my goal would be to complete those as well if I have time.

And that's about it.  Everything else in the game I have basically mastered.  I have about 3 months to finish out my goals, which when set reasonably should be doable.  I'm still gonna be really sad when the game finally does get shut down and I'm not even sure what game I would play afterwards.  I still occasionally crush candy, but I moved on from Simpsons Tapped Out.  Square Enix's only other decent mobile Final Fantasy game is Brave Exvius, but I didn't like it as much as FFRK and eventually walked away from it with no intention of coming back.  Ahh well, it is what it is!

Updates to come at the end of September with tons of pictures to show off my collection and mastery of this wonderful game. ♥