A Smorgasbord of Updates, July 2019

That feeling when you realize you have not posted and the month is almost over. 😳

Overall July has been pretty lax and it was kind of planned that way.

The last week of June I was on a shore vacation with the family and when I got back to work many of my coworkers were off on a July 4th break so things were quiet as I killed some bugs and built some more Admin UI in Phoenix.

July 11th was my 40th birthday and so I took a little time off around it. Nothing too big (I did not want a party) but instead had a nice quiet dinner with my Mom and Sister.

Over the next two weeks was normal work, nothing too crazy.

On July 23rd we kick-started our new Book Club for the Philly Elixir group. We’ll be reading Elixir in Action (2nd edition) which seems to be a quick review of the language basics then a deep dive into the OTP concurrency features that utilize the Erlang VM. Should be a fun read and I am anxious to share it with my local Elixir friends.

For the last week of July, I’m attending An Event Apart DC.

An Event Apart DC is a three-day conference with 17 sessions and an intense focus on digital design, UX, content, code, and more, giving you deep insights into where we are now and where things are going next.

On the hustle front, I’ve been making small steps with my side project (not very public yet). Most of the time has been spent on learning infrastructure things rather than actual features but that’s ok since a big goal of the side project is learning new things.

July Gaming Update

While we are here, let’s talk about games too!

In the spring I binged hard on MLB: The Show. I played a lot of games as the Phillies in mock postseasons and even enjoyed some online play (during a free Playstation Plus trial).

I also recently played a bit of Final Fantasy 14. I like many parts of the game but I’ll admit to getting overwhelmed with the Main Story Quest grind. I wish their was more voice acting in these quests and I also wish there was less tedious travel (so many quests would send you our to have a quick conversations with someone and then back super quick with no real game play outside travel). I don’t mind some of this, as it can help with world emersion but I found it to happen a bit too much. I’ve since paused my subscription but will probably be back in time.

In recent weeks my focus has been Pokemon, specifically Pokemon Red via the Virtual Console on my 3DS. There is community outrage that the new games in the series will lack the National Dex and I couldn’t help but get inspired to fill out the original dex, in Pokemon Red. I’ll post more once I finish but you can peek at my Micro.Blog for a few action photos.

Up next? I did pick up Dragon Quest Builders 2. I really enjoyed the first one, though did not finish it. September will also bring us The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and WoW Classic. Lots to play.