Pokemon, Robotics, Battery, Schoolwork
By Derek | November 5, 2019
A good Tuesday. (5th)
Played some Pokemon yesterday. Went to a Hobby Lobby near us to buy some green shirts, we needed three and they only had one.
This morning, ran to a different Hobby Lobby to buy a couple more green shirts.
Robotics. Walked the kids through gears, gear ratios and how those ratios can adjust the workload (torque vs. speed) by adjusting which gear is the driver and which gear is driven.
Had a phone call with a customer to install some software on a new laptop they bought.
Jill’s car battery went flat and had to be jumped after martial arts today, I drove up there to hang out with her after my phone call.
Once we got home, we got to work on our younger son’s school work. Did that nearly up until bed time.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Games, Microsoft, Robotics, Technology | No Comments »
Late Entry, Extra Life
By Derek | November 3, 2019
A good Sunday. (3rd)
Yesterday was Extra Life Game Day.
Got up early to finish packing our computers and stuff for game day. My younger son wasn’t feeling well, so I left him home to sleep a bit.
Went to Rackspace to take part in this year’s RackerGamers event. Got set up and played games for many, many hours. The event started at 8am. Did some volunteering at the beginning of the event to get everything set up before I started setting up my PC & XBox.
After 11am, went back home to pick up my younger son, pack his computer and bring it up there, too. We ate lunch while we were home.
Played some Apex Legends, and some Star Citizen. I also started the campaign for Gears of War 4, I hadn’t played it at all yet. I played almost 7 hours of that. After that, played some Destiny 2 with my buddy Nathan. That was fun.
We came home to sleep around 1:30am this morning.
Sorry for no update yesterday. I was too tired to last for the entire event. we set the alarm for 4 hours, accounting for the time change.
I snoozed my alarm 4 or 5 times, though, so we didn’t get back up there today until around 6am today. Played a bit more Destiny 2, then decided to pack it up.
Spent some time volunteering / helping pack up, then came home to sleep, but didn’t end up going to sleep.
We ended just vegging for a bit, and then starting a movie to help us not go to sleep. We watched the new Lion King (2019).
Included below are some highlights from my gaming sessions.
- https://youtu.be/CeytL-3tU8Q Apex Legends: Worst respawn ever (20s)
- https://youtu.be/TzZm1S6EEkw Apex Legends: Do I even know how to play? (33s)
- https://youtu.be/zMGwuZTgVkQ Gears of War 4: Campaign Casual Part 1 (6h15m)
- https://youtu.be/rDV1YL5zSaw Star Citizen: Walking new player through the basics (2h45m)
Topics: Entertainment, ExtraLife, Family, Food, Friends, Games, Me, Microsoft, Movies, RackerGamers, Star Citizen, Technology | No Comments »
RackerGamers, Extra Life, XBox, Riverwalk
By Derek | November 1, 2019
A good Friday. (1st)
Took off work today to help setup for Game Day tomorrow. Our younger son went with to help setup, and we started about 9:30am. He was a good help throughout the day.
We made a run to CostCo to get snacks for the volunteers, and then to Harbor Freight to pick up some cushy floor mats, to lay out in the tabletop area of the event.
One of the things that needed done was setting up two new tables to run our point of sale system. RackerGamers’ CEO (Arthur) picked up a couple of Amazon Fire HD8 tablets for this purpose. Of course, the Square POS software isn’t available in the Amazon Appstore, but it’s easy enough to “side load” the Google Play Store and install it. Easy peasy.
So, we got that done, and got the event space mostly setup. We had a good amount of volunteers helping to set up the space.
Then Arthur left and came back with a brand new 4K XBox & TV, and asked me if I could get that all set up as well. The XBox came with a 30 day trial for GamePass, so I got a bunch of different games installed from different genres so that people can try out a bunch of stuff. This will be our organizations first “fleet” console.
I left the setup when we were done around 5pm, but by the time we got home (it’s not very far) our younger son wasn’t feeling well. He’s been forgetting to take his allergy medicine, and this feels like what normally happens when he forgets for a while.
Jill and I went down to the riverwalk, our younger son stayed home with our niece so that he could sleep. We went downtown to watch a river parade, but were very disappointed in it, and the new way they are treating visitors to La Villita. Sad.
Got home, loaded the cooler with waters, made sure all my games were up to date on my PC and XBox, and then disassembled my PC before bed. Getting to bed a bit later than I wanted tonight, as I need to get up at 6am tomorrow, to get to the event early so that I can get the check-in and the merchandise table set up before people get there.
Topics: ExtraLife, Family, Friends, Me, Microsoft, RackerGamers, Technology | No Comments »
Halloween, RackerGamers, Candy, Health, Friends
By Derek | October 31, 2019
A great Thursday (Halloween).
Normal work day for me, went into the office today.
Ran the RackerGamers t-shirt table during lunch today. Rackspace also had a pumpkin carving contest today, I voted for the Death Star one.
Worked on my secondary project today, documentation.
Handed out candy today after work, we always give out a bunch for Halloween.
Also earned both my Apple Watch October Challenge, and my October Perfect Month. I’m getting back to where I was last year before I got hurt.
Our traveler friend showed up late this evening, as he’s going to be participating in Extra Life with us this year. I’m pretty pumped, it’s less than two days away. I helped him with tweaking some stuff on his computer so that he can play the game on his main computer, and capture and stream from his laptop. Pretty neat stuff. If you haven’t donated to my Extra Life page, now’s the time.
Time for bed, gotta go help setup the event tomorrow, for Saturday.
Topics: ExtraLife, Friends, Health, Me, Microsoft, Photos, RackerGamers, Technology, Work | No Comments »
Dr, Work, PT, RackerGamers
By Derek | October 30, 2019
A good Wednesday. (30th)
Dr. appt first thing this morning, to follow up on my kidney stone / abdominal pain, which completely went away. The doctor said that sometimes once the stone enters the bladder it can pass without further pain. Who knew?
Back to work to get a few things done, then off to my physical therapy appointment.
Back from PT, to finish out my regular workday. Got some good work done writing documentation for my secondary project.
RackerGamers board meeting tonight, we worked to finalize plans for the prize packs (for large numbers of donations raised) and other miscellanea for the event, which is only TWO DAYS away!
Got a flyer designed for the prize packs after the meeting, got two printed up, and laminated. You get to see it here, first!
Also — tomorrow is all hallows eve!
Topics: ExtraLife, Health, Me, Photos, RackerGamers, Work | No Comments »
Lunch, Robotics, Star Citizen, Heroes
By Derek | October 29, 2019
A good Tuesday. (29th)
Normal (crazy) Tuesday for us.
Had an errand to run this morning, had to pick up lunch to go.
Robotics was kind of crazy today. We had multiple kids just doing their own thing, which wasn’t always on task.
Martial arts for the younger one after that.
Back home. Salad for dinner, plus a few left over boneless wings.
Played some Star Citizen before bed. It’s FreeFly week, so if you want to try it, make a free account, with my referral link, then if you choose to buy a game package, you’ll get 5,000 in game credits!
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-H4F3-KZZH?
Forgot to post some pics I took the other day at a local business. The dressed their outside animal statues up as heroes.
Captain AmeriBull 
SuperHorse 
Wonder Bear
Topics: Entertainment, Food, Games, Me, Photos, Robotics, Star Citizen, Technology | No Comments »
PT, Food, Work
By Derek | October 28, 2019
A good Monday. (28th)
Physical therapy first thing this morning. I set an alarm, but didn’t feel it since I had my watch set to “Theater Mode” all night. Oops. Jill woke me up with just early enough to get there on time. My therapist added more new exercises. I tracked the exercise using my watch, and I burned 729 (550 active) calories during that hour and 5 minutes. Average heart rate was 111bpm.
Back home for breakfast and a shower.
Was able to conference call with one of my customers in Seguin and solved an issue on one of their PCs that was preventing a workflow from succeeding.
Returned a computer to another customer here in town.
Back home again. Grabbed some “leftovers” out of the fridge for lunch. In this case, it was brisket from Smokin Joes, from Saturday.
Worked on my computer a bit, set up the console for the kids to play.
Had dinner with the family, and our niece’s family. Jill made hatch sliders and our niece made boneless wings. Had a bit of each, pretty awesome.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Health, Me, Microsoft, Photos, Technology | No Comments »
Sleep, Driving, Family
By Derek | October 27, 2019
A good Sunday. (27th)
Stayed up late last night, got up late today. Exercised after noon.
Went out driving a bit, ended up stopping at Sam’s Burger Joint downtown. They have great food, but we were there too early for any live music. We got to see some cool bikes, though, they were pulling out as we pulled in, including a couple Spyders, with two wheels in the front. I think technically, those aren’t motorcycles, but they still look very cool.
Got home just in time for our niece’s family to show up, back from out of town.
Got some good playtime on Nine Parchments on the Switch with the kids (ours is 11, theirs are a bit younger) before their bedtime.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Food, Games, Health, Me, Nintendo, Technology | No Comments »
Work, TV, Food
By Derek | October 26, 2019
A good Saturday. (26th)
Regular work day for me.
Finished Agents of Shield, season 4. They really cranked up the heat with the Aida character.
Had some chicken wings that Jill brought home from Smokin Joes last night for lunch. I confess, I normally prefer chicken strips, but these were really good. There’s something primal about eating chicken wings (or chicken in general) that you don’t get from strips. It reminds you that you’re a meat-atarian.
Earlier in the day Jill and my younger son went downtown with some friends to check out the Día de Muertos celebration. After I got off work, we tried going back down there, but it was crazy, and parking was awful, so we just left. One of the pitfalls of working until 7p on a Saturday.
After we came back from downtown, we decided to take our younger son to Arctic Ape. It’s a local dessert place that’s excellent. He had previously been participating in the Book It program, that lets you earn Pizza Hut pizza for reading books. Now that he’s aged out of that program, Jill and I decided to “continue” it with local places. He picked Arctic Ape.
Jill and I started Marvel’s Iron Fist. It’s pretty good so far. Watched too many episodes before bed, good thing I don’t have to work tomorrow.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Me, TV, Work | No Comments »
PT, Work, RackerGamers, Movie
By Derek | October 25, 2019
A good Friday. (25th)
Physical therapy first thing this morning.
Regular work day for me.
Got more RackerGamer game day t-shirts ordered today. Our vendor walked me through where the price breaks are for the t-shirts, so that I could order the correct quantity we needed at the lowest cost.
Worked a bit on my movie collection tonight. Got a new movie in and wanted to get it processed and converted to add it before bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Health, Me, Movies, RackerGamers, Work | No Comments »