A new year and several years since my last blog. You know the old saying. "Been busy with life. Family, work, relationships, etc", right? Well, that couldn't be far from the truth.
My wife whom I've known since high school and married to for 16 years passed away on September 22, 2016. We have 3 children that I was left to take care of on my own, but with have received help from my mother-in-law as she was living with us at the time. Helping around the house taking care of her and our newest child. Things are good now. The kids are older and my youngest is growing up so fast.
I'm no longer working in the gaming industry either in the development, retail, customer service, or any field and facet of the industry. In fact, before my wife's passing I had just entered into the banking and retail software industry and have been doing so for over 3 years. After my 2nd time getting laid off from the same company due to a merger and restructuring of roles I found myself in the IT industry, but still among software development. So now I'm doing that and working on software development stuff to transition into a Software Developer/Software Engineer.
I'm still attending tournaments. Well, up until the pandemic hit. I'm still involved in many organized events and running events of my own (online). Streaming, not so much, but every now and then I may go live with some Killer Instinct, Animal Crossing, or something random like newborn puppies. Yeah that's new too. Our dog (or Grandma's dog rather) had puppies. 6 of them. I let the kids keep 2 of them. For now. They are both female and the first and last born. As for the breed, they're a mix of a Golden Retriever and Chihuahua (a fury rat like version - don't ask). They're cute.
What else, what else? Umm... I've been building gaming PCs for family, friends, and creating builds for more potential clients. Providing small services such as data retrieval, virus/adware/spyware removal, and other desktop/helpdesk type issues. This pandemic has given me time to work and finish a few DIY projects around the house and work on a completely new gaming setup.
Collecting! Yes, collections. Where to begin? When I was working at Blizzard (customer service) I've picked up collecting Funko Pop figures. 6 - 7 years later and I've amassed quite the collection. Mostly focusing on favorite franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, and Dragon Ball. Oh, and recently Transformers! Speaking of Transformers, I started back at collecting Transformers. Had many of them as a child, but never collected any as an adult until a few years ago. New hobbies have been helping with deal with depression and PTSD. Okay, well maybe not new hobbies, but new "items of collections".
Now that's just a summary, but as you can see, I've been keeping myself busy. The majority of the time has been occupied with working and raising my kids. Trying my best as a dad and finding a balance of Yes' and No's and stuff.
I want to be more active in everything that I involve myself with as I often tend to leave things unfinished and get distracted easily and then from distracted to forgetting about them for weeks, months, and years. lol With the way that Blogger handles images... actually, how photo website handles hosting images, they've now become a "member/premium" perk with limitations. I think I may have found a solution to this, but will have to test it. I want to provide quality content with great pictures, but as you can see from reading my older blogs many of those images have been removed by the host server or when you click on them, does nothing. So all you get is a thumbnail with a gnarly watermark! [Update: either I didn't know at the time or thought it was best to link to where I had pictures already uploaded online, but looks like I could have always attached photos here!]
Until my next update, see you later!
Oh, and here's a picture I took during the recent Ice Age, here in Texas! Haha
