Daniel J Isom

As I enter my final year of my 30s, it feels like a good time to reflect a bit. I wrote a similar, yet incredibly long winded, post entitled  Turning 32  back when I turned...32. I don't think this will be nearly as wordy, but it's a stream of consciousness type post so we'll see. Unlike 32, I've started to feel my age. So if you were to ask me the question "Do you feel older?" today, the answer would certainly be yes. It's not a bad thing, it's not that I feel like my body is breaking down or that I see the world in some significantly different ways. My life has just transitioned so much since that last post, especially in the past 2 years or so.  Going back a few years, I'm so thankful for my weight loss journey and being able to mostly keep the weight off since. Had I not done it in the first place then I think mornings would be harder, but I still feel pretty good when I get up. I've been in maintenance mode since the end of COVID and have

  March was an odd month, especially with Easter being at the end of it. Not as many segments in the post, but it was still a pretty productive month overall with some good stuff to share. Blah Blog Log February 2024 Wrap Up  - Great television, a podcast live show, and "The Cracken". Bored  Board Games March saw an uptick in number of plays and the same number of unique games of the year as played in February. I logged 64 plays across 32 games, 19 of those being new for the year. That brought me to 34.83% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 50.67% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). There are four or five games that I wanted to highlight from this batch, but two really stuck out and both happen to be new games (one isn't even published yet): Let's Go! to Japan  - I don't own this game, but my friend Eric from our game group got this recently and I liked it so much after the first play that I requested a second play the following me

I was sick with the flu for a portion of the month, but it was still pretty jam packed. Christine and I saw two live shows, we visited the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science with the kids, and I still found time to play a bunch of games. Blah Blog Log January 2024 Wrap Up - Board games, a mobile game, and a delicious sandwich. Criminal Podcast  - A favorite podcast of mine and I got to see their live show. Hidden Cup V  - One of the best Age of Empire II tournaments. Bored  Board Games Due to being sick throughout the middle of the month, I wasn't able to keep up the incredible pace that I set in January. However, I did still play quite a bit more than I typically played up until recently. I logged 45   plays across 26 games, 19 of those being new for the year. That brought me to 24.1% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 36% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). Only two of the games were new to me, so the game I'm going to highlight this month

  About three and a half years ago, I wrote about the Twitch/YouTube streamer T90Official who covers all things Age of Empires II. Since finding his channel and then many others, I have been watching Age of Empires II content almost daily. There are so many great personalities who have built wonderful online communities in their chats on whatever platform they have been on over the years. While there are tens of thousands of players, the competitive scene is fairly small when it comes to the S-Tier tournaments. This means you know most, if not all, of the players competing. You've seen their gameplay, you know their preferences when it comes to civilization and map picks, and you could probably identify most of them if you watched a game without their name being on the screen. Well, that's what you'd think, but T90 has been running a tournament that has proven even the experts of the game may not know the players as well as they think they do. And that is the whole premis

Last night Christine and I attended a live event for one of my favorite podcasts, Criminal . From their website, "Criminal is an award-winning podcast about true crime. Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle." Unlike a lot of true crime media, the stories aren't typically gruesome or horrific. The host, Phoebe Judge, does a great job of taking out certain details of the more violent stories which allows her to tell the story, as it happened, in a more nuanced way. Since starting the show in 2014, there have been more than 250 episodes that have been a joy to listen to.  For their 10 year anniversary, Phoebe, co-creator Lauren Spohrer, and the rest of the Criminal team are currently on tour doing a set of live shows across the country. Knowing my love of the show, Christine asked if I wanted tickets to go when they went on sale months ago. So on a cold night in Glenside, PA, a town just north of Philadelphia, a few hundr

  The new year has started off really well, despite it being incredibly cold. A couple of delays and work closings were a great way to ease into the month. Because I was busy focusing on my resolutions and playing a new to me mobile game, there are fewer segments this month but still some great stuff to cover. Blah Blog Log December 2023 Wrap-Up  - A busy gaming month and some great food. 2024 New Year's Resolutions - New Year. New Goals. Age of Origins - This mobile game is addicting and a time sink. Bored  Board Games  Board Game Arena continues to fuel the majority of my plays and will continue to do so if I want to meet my goal of 600 plays before the end of the year. However, January got off to an absolute bang because I logged 100 plays of 35 unique games. That puts me 16.67% of the way to part one of my goal and 23.33% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). Sea Salt & Paper and Res Arcana fueled the way for a second straight month because they're ama

My latest obsession is the mobile game Age of Origins also known as Age of Z. Age of Origins is a zombie war strategy game for mobile where you slay zombies, forge alliances, and rebuild civilization. Players build their city from the ground up to produce resources, recruit soldiers, and upgrade their technology. There are player vs player battles, events against zombie hordes, a tower defense mode, and so many other facets to the game. While Age of Origins is free to play, pumping money into the game certainly could help you expedite your ability to reach the top of the rankings.  The other resource you could use to climb the ladder is time. If you think TikTok is a time sink, it has nothing on this game. For those of you familiar with Farmville and other games of the like that require you to log in multiple times a day because everything is on a timer, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Of course you could just play for a few minutes a day, but you won't find succ