Personal

2024 – Thanksgiving

The past few years have been pretty much WTH. The constant feeling of waiting for the next shoe to drop. If it’s not transitioning the parents into assisted living, it’s jury duty… If it’s not a hurricane, it’s having another appliance go bellow up right before a holiday. It’s hoping I still have a job after the next re-org. It’s hoping the next 4 years won’t completely bankrupt my retirement. It’s frustration laden with anxiety, without being able to see a silver-lining… And now, I should be thankful.

I found this menu in my parents stuff. It’s where my grandfather served in Europe, during WWII. It’s about 6 months before the end of the war… the war had been going on for about 5 years before, with no real end in sight.

In perspective, what we’ve been going through now is minor… almost a mild annoyance in comparison. We owe a lot to our parents/grandparents. And I’m thankful that my grandfather served food and supplies, rather than on the front lines. He survived and flourished.

…I read the prayer in the above menu, and wonder if “democratic society” still translates or what the prayer would read for modern times…

Geek, Personal, Travel

Splunk .conf 2024

I’m back in Las Vegas to experience CriblCon & Splunk .conf 2024. I wanted to get a good picture of the Sphere, but couldn’t find a good enough angle from the convention center, or Uber. There was a One Piece promotion going on at the time & wasn’t able to get a good video of it. :-/

Since Cisco bought Splunk, the conference felt a little different this year… Or I’m just getting old. The vendor area seemed smaller. The excitement didn’t seem a grand as before. Should be interesting if Cisco continues the conference, or if it gets folded into the bigger Cisco conference.

This was the view from in front of the hotel.

Otaku, Personal, Travel

Japan Bound?

We are coming up on the end of May. I haven’t had much to write, between the changes at work, planning off/on for our trip to Japan & dealing with things as they crop up… First it was issues with boarding our dogs at our vet… then moving dad into a VA nursing home… being backed into when trying to pull out of a parking spot after putting in a money exchange order (no one was hurt or much damage to the car, but annoying)… then dealing with a new boarding place wanting a “certificate of completion” from a trainer… It’s literally been one thing after another either making my wife want to postpone the trip and me stressed out.

This seems to happen whenever I plan a vacation… I was making plans to do a European LEGO event months before Covid-19 spread across the world. I had booked hotel & flights… planned out our activities… Was researching somethings (local towns to explore) that I thought my wife would enjoy doing that wasn’t 100% LEGO related… But all in all, I think I’m just having flashbacks to 2020, where it was bad news on top of bad news…But to keep things in perspective, what happened with Covid was way worse/sad/world-changing/heart-wrenching than a few personal set-backs and a selfish desire to travel.

Our track-record hasn’t been good… We had to change up what we had planned to do for our honeymoon, and even after postponing it, we traveled a few days after 9/11 for it…

The silver lining for this trip; we’ve had friends that spent 2 week in Japan before we fly out… Sending us tips and warnings — the touristy spots are very crowded, buses and trains are packed like sardines.. plan to do a lot of walking… pack light, hauling suitcases are a pain — as well a sharing fun things try/do — bullet trains are cool… spend time on “kitchen street”… had the best sushi of my life… Makes me more upset/sad/jealous if we have to postpone.

Anyway, back to the 2,000 things we need to take care of before the trip… And if you can’t figure it out from the pictures, the HOA sent us an email saying we needed to power wash our drive way… Because wasting water is fun and helps with stress!

Personal

The End of 2022

We’re coming up on the end of 2022… It was better than 2020, but still not back to normal… If I look back through my pictures last year, the things that stand out:

  • my niece graduated collage
  • the wife and I went to a few drag show despite the political climate in FL
  • went to Las Vegas for a conference, then spent a few days afterwards on a mini vacation with the wife
  • survived a hurricane, but had to cancel travel plans to a LEGO event in Seattle
  • attended a good friend’s wedding
  • went on a cruise on the new Disney ship
  • tried a few new places to eat (conveyer belt sushi…)
  • and a lot of pictures of our two furry dogs…

Work is work… we started going into the office a few days out of the week. But I’m still a lot on Zoom calls — I don’t see that changing when half of our team is in a different time zone.

And I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out my LEGO collection…

Personal

Daily Life

If I think about this web-site and what the last few posts have been about, nothing has gone as planned… the pandemic, things getting back to normal, our personal lives… it’s all been chaotic. Our trip to Japan has been pushed out another year — the country did open to visitors about a month before the time we set aside to go, but the restrictions were still too great (had to be apart of a tour group) for what we wanted to do. Not to mention, ended up going to a conference for work — which was a nice distraction, but hard not to feel like we traded one tourist trap for another..

And now, it’s too hot to do much outside without suffering bouts of heat exhaustion… Although, the rainy season hasn’t kicked in yet…

Photo is from the Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden

Anime, Otaku

Almost Caught Up

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So I’m almost caught up in One Piece; there’s about 20ish episodes to go… I forget when I started the series, but I think it was during the pandemic… And I still need to watch the movies and side-stories… But for the most part, I’m almost caught up.

I honestly thought the story would be a lot further along by now… The Dressrosa story arch seemed to drag out forever! If it took that many episodes to defeat a warlord of the sea, for Luffy to defeat a Emperor (I would think) would take 2-3x longer story arch… let alone current developments… Not to mention, he hasn’t face off with Blackbeard yet… Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the story so far, but there were points where it seemed like it dragged on forever. And now that I can’t binge watch it, I’m a little concerned it will drag out more.

As I sit here thinking about travel plans in the next two years and as I sort pirate LEGOs that I’ve unearthed, the thought struck me that I should do a One Piece (traveling) MOC… Something from Skypiea, maybe? So I went online and found this MOC of the Thousand Sunny by Alex Jones… I think I’d like to do the Going Merry… Looks like someone beat me to it… But I’d have to do a version of the Going Merry, because it’s the ship they took to Skypiea…

Anime, Otaku

Ace and Whitebeard are Dead!

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For those of you who watched One Piece, this news isn’t really a surprise. The episode of their death aired back in 2011, so I’m a little behind. As part of the 2020 pandemic, I started watching One Piece with my wife on Netflix, and despite it’s quirkiness, when episodes ran out on Netflix, I kept going… I think my wife wanting to stop watching about half way into the first season — the cussing and silliness was too much for her. It looks like I’m nearing the half-way mark in the series (ep. 487)… it’s still running, with 959 episodes in total as I type this.

The heaviness of the story arch is still weighing on me emotionally. Luffy has rejoined his crew and has continued on to mermaid island, 2 years after the loss of Ace. Up until then, several episodes were dedicated to bonds of brotherhood and the loss of a family member, and the impact it had on the friends/family around them… Surprisingly, it’s very touching. So much that it makes me wonder about the series’ writer and if they’ve experience similar grief to draw upon… From a few blog posts I’ve read, sound it was more of a deliberate decision to kill of Ace to help Luffy go onto the next level — I get that — and I’m feeling a tad bit emotionally manipulated.

That’s the funny thing about American story tellers, you can generally tell when the writers are trying to manipulate the audience to feel a certain way — it’s almost like they’re hitting you over the head with it… the sappy music… pull the camera in close to the actor as they’re starting to tear up… it’s to the point where it’s cliche… But this One Piece story arch felt different. Maybe it’s the length — 100 episodes for this season, 30 of them covered the war ending in Ace & Whitebeard’s death — to spread it out over, however the build-up was just unbearable — I felt like Luffy was covering the same 30 ft, of ground every episode for 10 episodes straight… Maybe it’s the source material (although I haven’t lost a brother, so hard to connect on that level)… Maybe it’s just refreshingly different… Not formulaic in the western short story telling sense… however, it could be formulaic in the eastern epic melodrama sense…

Meh. This wasn’t the reason I started this post — to rabbit-hole into comparing/contrasting different story telling techniques. More to explore how I was feeling and the impact it’s having on me…

Personal

Happy Craptastic New Year!

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Happy New Year! 2020 was a craptastic year; this one doesn’t seem to be much better.

When I started this post, I was going to be optimistic or thoughtful about the previous year. There’s been enough negativity about last year on FB — between the pandemic… friends being put on furlough at work.. having to cancel all and any vacation plans… a very blurred line between the work/life balance, with no clear break… then going into this year, expecting a peaceful transition of power — instead we get a pouty ex-girlfriend that just wont accept that it’s over…

The pandemic has claimed many lives and business victims. I don’t understand how the stock market can do so well…