I have no regrets with any of the major choices I’ve made in my life. I am eternally grateful for my current job and would never quit unless the company goes bankrupt or gets sold to a different company that chooses to change its identity at its core. I have almost no insecurities and am often praised for my explosive (and sometimes excessive) confidence. I am completely financially stable and am satisfied with the volume of my various income sources.

 
With all that being said, I do think that my youth is running out. Due to the work-from-anywhere nature of my current job and the freedom I have from not having a wife, children, or pets, I am able to do quite literally whatever I want. But, once I start settling down in a few years, I’ll have new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that limit my range of activities.

I think it’s reasonable to want to capitalize on this youth without it being considered a quarter-life crisis. There was a good transitional phase in my hous­ing situation that just came up, so I decided to pass on extending or signing a new lease. I am going to put all my belongings in a storage facility in Las Vegas and spend at least the next half year being a nomad.

I’ll be splitting my time primarily among three places:

1. In a spare bedroom at Tempo’s company headquarters in Long Beach, California;
2. At my parents’ house in the Chicagoland suburbs, where I grew up; and
3. At various Marriott-branded hotels across the country with extended-stay discounts, such as Residence Inn and Courtyard.

My current plan is to head over to Southern California for a few weeks, then set off on a 1½-month-long road trip to Illinois, stopping by various major cities in all the states along the way. I would spend about a week or so in each city and drive no more than about 3-4 hours on each weekend day to make it to the next city. This will ensure I don’t get driving fatigue while traveling alone, allow me sufficient time to work my normal working hours, and give me an opportunity to explore the best parts of each city during my free time.

Once I make it to Illinois, I’ll spend about a month and a half living with my parents, whom I have not seen in-person since December 2019 prior to the pan­dem­ic.

By this point, it will be the beginning of September, upon which I will make a determination depending on how my road tripping has been so far—either continue East to extend my journey, or make the 1½-month-long trip back to Southern California, this time taking a more southern route as to avoid potential inclement weather in the Rocky Mountains.

And from there, I’m unsure what will be next. I may continue spending more time with friends and family and traveling around, or I may want to return home to Las Vegas and sign a new lease to settle back down and return to normal life. The entire point of this experiment is to be flexible with whatever might come up, so I’m leaving the possibilities open.

 
So… I guess I’m a travel blogger now.

You can find a lot of helpful information about the COVID-19 vaccine online, but people often want to hear anecdotes directly from others to see what their own experience might be like. As of not too long ago, I received the second dose of my COVID-19 vaccination, and in a couple weeks, I’ll officially be able to call myself “fully vaccinated” after my immune system becomes fully able to recognize and fight off the virus.

To begin, I want to point out that there is a possibility that I had anti­bod­ies, but I’m not entirely sure. I recall getting pretty ill right after I trav­eled to PAX East in Boston, which was right around the beginning of when COVID-19 was getting widespread in the United States and people were slowly starting to get cautious. I ultimately never got my blood tested for antibodies, and now that I’m vaccinated, I guess I’ll never know.

For the first few months, I was fairly cautious and didn’t really leave my home… though I generally don’t leave my home too often anyway, so that’s not saying much. I did not wear a mask for the first few months of the pandemic, and only started after Nevada imposed a state-wide mask mandate. A lot of my travel was canceled at the beginning of the lock­down period, but shortly after, I resumed normal travel.

After going to Boston for PAX East, I also went to Los Angeles, California on multiple occasions; New York City, New York; Dallas, Texas; Orlando, Florida; Minneapolis, Minnesota (but only for a layover); Seattle, Wash­ing­ton; Portland, Oregon; the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area; the state lines of West Virginia and Maryland; Detroit, Michigan (only for a layover); and as I mentioned before, multiple trips to the Southern California area spread out throughout all these trips.

So yes, I did indeed travel a lot during the pandemic. As far as I’m aware, I did not catch COVID-19 throughout any of my travels unless I had it and was entirely asymptomatic. In fact, I felt healthier traveling during the pandemic; I occasionally have a very mild illness after coming back from extended travel, but I did not feel sick at all whatsoever throughout the entire past year.

 
In mid-March, I was eligible to get the first dose of my vaccination. I went on the State of Nevada government’s COVID-19 vaccine hub and scheduled my first dose on the earliest date available, which was two days from the date on which I scheduled the appointment. I opted to get my vaccination from the Southern Nevada Health District at the Cashman Center at 850 Las Vegas Blvd N.

On the day of the vaccination, I arrived at the Cashman Center to a packed parking lot and a massive line. The line started outdoors and snaked its way multiple times before reaching the entrance of the building, then snaked again many more multiple times indoors. In total, it took about an hour and a half after arriving on-site before I was done waiting in line, received my vaccination, and sat for 15 minutes to check for any unexpected allergic re­ac­tions.

The ac­tu­al process of receiving the vaccination went smoothly. At the check-in desk, I presented my appointment confirmation QR code, government-issued identification, insurance card, and credential that qualified me to get an earlier vaccination. The check-in representative looked through every­thing and waved me onto the next part of the line. When it was my turn to get vaccinated, I was sent to a line with a nurse in medical attire. She seemed skilled and experienced administering vaccinations, as the needle insertion was fairly painless.

I was scheduled to make a trip to California at this time, but just in case I would experience side effects, I postponed my travel for a few days. Later in the evening on the date of the vaccination, as well as the following day, my arm felt mild soreness at the site of the injection. As the nurse recommended, I kept my arm active through light exercise (like arm circles, hand grippers, etc.) but avoided harder exercise (like weightlifting). The soreness went away after the second day after the vaccination.

Three days after my vaccination, I traveled to Southern California and felt no side effects or other changes in my health.

The second vaccination dosage was far more eventful. When I arrived back at the Cashman Center, the parking lot had far more open spots, but the actual line was noticeably longer (I imagine people were just parking at a different lot on the other side of the building). In total, it took about two hours this time (an increase of 30 mi­nutes) after arriving on-site before I was done waiting in line, had received my vaccination, and finished sitting for 15 mi­nutes.

The actual vaccination process itself was comparable to the first dosage in terms of process and logistics.

The difference came later that day. My vaccination appointment was in the early afternoon. By the time night came around on vaccination day, I felt just tired enough that I wanted to take a nap. I took a one-hour nap and woke up feeling groggy and more tired. I watched a few YouTube videos, did some work, and tried to go to sleep. At this time, I felt like my body was having a little bit of difficulty regulating its tem­per­a­ture. At approximately 2 AM, I finally fell asleep.

The following morning, I woke up at about 9 AM. I stayed in bed and browsed through social media and replied to some emails and messages, and by 10 AM, I felt noticeably weak and unwell. I’m usually the type of person to power through illness, so I forced myself to get out of bed and take a shower. After a warm shower, I felt much, much worse. I dried off and got straight back into bed.

Throughout the entire day, I had very low energy and felt like I had a very severe common cold. My body had very severe issues controlling its temperature; I would feel burning hot when I put on a blanket, but freezing cold if I take it off. The air conditioning breeze would feel refreshingly a­maz­ing for the first few minutes, then it would feel like my face was getting frostbitten afterwards.

From 11 AM until 3:30 PM, I laid in bed watching videos and browsing social media on my phone. From 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM, I got up to get some food and catch up on some work that was piling up throughout the day, then went back to bed at 4:30 PM to watch more videos.

At 8 PM, I tried ordering some ice cream from Postmates. I had low appetite, but I didn’t want to be on a calorie deficit while I was feeling unwell, so I figured ice cream would address that problem. Well, with Postmates having the most unreliable delivery drivers I’ve ever seen in my life, the driver as­signed to my order marked my order as delivered, but it was nowhere to be seen. (Postmates officially had more lost orders than correct ones at this point, so I contacted customer service and asked them to delete my account.)

At about 10:30 PM, I got up again to make some instant ramen. I cooked and ate for half an hour, then went back to bed. At 12:30 AM, I fell asleep. I woke up at 4:30 AM because my roommate was still up and I could hear her talking on a call in her room. At this point, I had gotten enough rest that I didn’t feel as bad. About 45 minutes later, I fell back asleep and woke up at 9:15 AM.

When I woke up, I felt like I was at about 95% health compared to pre-vaccine. I still had very, very mild body aches, but my body temperature reg­u­la­tion was back to normal, and I was able to get up and move around without feeling like I was going to collapse. At this point, I was well enough that I forgot I had even been sick the previous day, and I carried on as usual.

 
Something to note here is that I seem to have an overpowered immune system. Even when I caught the common cold when I was younger, I was no­to­ri­ous for never being sick for longer than a day and a half. This might have something to do with my recovery time, and if you end up feeling un­well with side effects, you might not necessarily recover in just one day.

Speaking of side effects, I’m hearing that my pattern of side effects is commonplace among other people I know as well. For most people’s first dosage, they had little to no side effects, but they would get nearly knocked out after the second dosage.

I wish you the best of luck with your own vaccination experience, and hopefully, your side effects don’t completely cripple you. My word of advice is to leave a day or two free after each vaccination dose, just in case. If you’re concerned about the side effects, just keep in mind, a few days of “fake ill­ness” while your immune system accepts the vaccination is far, far better than getting the real COVID-19 and putting yourself in a life-threatening position.

I always say that the best part of traveling is coming back home. Throughout all my trips, I’m always looking forward to my return flight… being able to shower again in my own bathroom… getting a good night’s sleep on my own bed.

But what if the problem lies not in the travel itself, but the types of trips I take, and the places I go?

What if, sometimes, just maybe, the best part of traveling isn’t coming back home, but rather, the experiences you have and the memories you make?

Last week went by too fast.

…

If you really think about it, the scope of the world is a bit intimidating.

Think about how complex you are. Think about the relationships you have, the role you play in your community, and even just the fact that you are com­plex enough to think about this very concept.

There are nearly eight billion people on Earth. Nearly eight billion organisms that are just like you, have their own intricate set of thoughts, and have their own life stories.

I think one of the most dangerous things you can do in life is to focus too hard on your own world. When I was younger, my parents regularly told me a Korean proverb about a frog in a well. To the frog in the well, the sky is nothing close to a formidable opponent. But once the frog exits the well, it’s in for an astronomic surprise. Literally.

Once in a while, something comes up that keeps my perspective in check. Sometimes, it’s just a gentle nudge, while other times, it’s a blazing inferno.

Beginning tomorrow, and over the next several days, I’m going to try and put out a blazing inferno.

…

On a lighter note, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

…

This upcoming trip that I’m leaving for tomorrow is definitely going to be one of those trips where the best part of traveling is going to be coming back home.

I’ll see you next week, Las Vegas.

I heard that snake plants (Dracaena trifasciata, formerly Sansevieria) were excellent house plants. They have good air cleansing properties, they release a relatively high amount of oxygen, and they’re next to impossible to kill. All of these points are important to me, as I want a plant that’s going to improve my living situation and look out for my health, while also being able to occasionally survive on its own while I’m out on extended business travel.

Today, I decided to buy a snake plant. I searched Google Maps for the closest Home Depot and headed west towards the Garden Center of the Home Depot on the 800 block of South Rainbow Boulevard. I went inside, only to be massively overwhelmed by way too many plants.

After a few minutes of browsing, I discovered a small problem. All the plants out in the Garden Center were potted in flimsy plastic temporary pots, and I would have to move the plant into a better home by purchasing a separate ceramic pot and some dirt.

You may be asking, why is this a problem? Well, I didn’t want to buy a bag of dirt, only to use just a portion of it and have a leftover half-bag of dirt. This scenario wouldn’t matter much for most people, but remember that I live 400 feet up in the air in a high-rise condo. I don’t have a backyard where I can dump the remaining dirt, and I don’t have a garage where I can just store the leftover dirt for future use.

But, for this to even be a problem in the first place, I would have to find a snake plant that I want to bring home. I decided to save some time by asking the Garden Center attendant.

The attendant was obviously wearing a mask, which isn’t too confusing if you’re reading this blog post not too long after I published it, but in case you’re someone from the far future and aren’t aware, everyone needs to wear a mask right now because there is a COVID-19 pandemic. However, this attendant decided to wear her mask so it was covering her mouth… but left her nose hanging out over the top of the mask.

I approached her and stayed six feet away from her like a good social distancer, but she slowly crept closer and closer to me until she was within a foot from my face. From here ensued one of those comical scenarios where two people with different personal space requirements are in a conversation, and one person is functionally “chasing down” the other. I think we traveled literally from one side of the Garden Center to the other while she told me how there were no live snake plants I could buy, but there were some fake ones available, they had a great selection of different plants, and there were also some real snakes for sale if I wanted to go three miles west to the pet store.

I thanked her for her help and left Home Depot.

I don’t get discouraged that easily. I decided that my next stop would be the Garden Center at Lowe’s Home Improvement. I made it there to find that there was as equally of an aggressive selection of plants there as there was at Home Depot. However, I managed to actually find a snake plant. Now I had to go back to resolving my problem of not wanting to buy a bag of dirt.

I flagged down another Garden Center attendant and asked her if I could just pay someone at Lowe’s to move the snake plant from its plastic container to a ceramic pot. She was a bit confused as to why I needed someone to do that, and insisted that the process was very easy and that I could do it myself. I then had to go through an extended conversation where I explained that I live on the Las Vegas Strip and I don’t really have a place to do home gardening, let alone a place to use leftover dirt.

The relieving part about this conversation was that this attendant appeared to know how to wear a mask. … The unfortunate part was that she removed her mask every time she was talking, then placed it back on her face every time she was done talking.

She may or may not have ultimately proposed a valid solution to my problem during our conversation, but I was so confused at how a country could possibly be so incompetent at using personal protective equipment during a global pandemic that I don’t even remember what she said.

The only thing I recall is thanking her for her help and leaving the store without a snake plant.

…

So yeah, I still need to go buy a snake plant.

It’s probably no surprise that Glocks are my favorite firearms—they’re simple, reliable, and capable. It’s also probably no surprise that my pistol of choice is the Glock 19—it’s not as large as the classic Glock 17, but it’s still big enough that I can comfortably grip it as someone who is almost six feet tall with proportionally-sized hands.

If you know me, it also probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I like white things. I find white to be a clean, crisp, modern color, and if I have a choice to purchase something that’s white (if that “something” isn’t already ubiquitously white), then I will seize that opportunity. I have all white furniture, bed sheets, towels, most electronics, rugs, lamps… you get the idea. I particularly like things that are white when they are not traditionally white.

One thing that is obviously not traditionally white is firearms. As far as I’m aware, as of today, the full line-up of Glocks consists of black (or dark gray, depending on how you interpret it) firearms, except for the Glock 19X, which comes in coyote (which is a brownish tan color). Glock does have some red and blue firearms, but all of those are for training purposes only—red for no firing capability, and blue for training ammunition for law enforcement only.

Of course, this made for a great opportunity to turn another one of my possessions white.

So I did.

No, I did not take a can of spray paint to my gun. If I want something done, I like it being done right, and I knew for a fact that regular spray paint on the frame of a firearm would start coming off after my first few firing sessions just from the sweat and friction from my palms. Instead, I got it done by Magill’s Glock Store in San Diego, California.

The Glock Store converted my frame from black to white using a process called Cerakoting, which is applying a thin-film ceramic coating to an object to permanently customize its color.

If you want this done to your firearm as well, you can check out the customization options on GlockStore.com. If you already own your firearm, you can ship it to San Diego and they will apply the customization and ship it back directly to you. If you want to purchase a new firearm from them, they will apply the customization to your new firearm then ship it to a local FFL transfer facility for pick-up.

Overall, I’d say that I am mostly satisfied, though there were two minor issues with the customization.

First, I obviously only wanted the frame turned white and the slide, barrel, and hardware left alone. This was mostly followed, though there was a small section on the slide near the muzzle that had some overspill of white. The area of overspill probably measures around 1 millimeter by 3 millimeters, so it’s microscopically tiny and most people probably wouldn’t even notice it, but being the detail-oriented person I am, it did stick out to me right when I inspected the firearm.

Second, I had ordered a colorfill of the lettering on the slide of the firearm. I had put in a request for the Glock logo and the “19 Gen 5,” “AUSTRIA,” and “9×19” text to be colorfilled white. However, they only did the colorfill on the Glock logo, as well as the serial number on the other side of the slide. Unfortunately, they actually sent me photos ahead of time before shipping the firearm to me, and I somehow did not notice the missing colorfill in the photos, so I approved them and now mostly consider it my own fault.

In the second photo posted above (with the slide locked back), you might notice that there are also some additional black spots around the corner-edges of the frame. Those spots actually did not come like that from the Glock Store; those spots actually showed up after I had holstered and unholstered the gun a few times, which leads me to believe that it is a friction spot from rubbing against the inside of my holster. On top of that, I also noticed that it might be black discoloration on top of the white Cerakote, so I actually anticipate that the black spots would come off if I took some really fine sand­paper and gently scrubbed those spots.

 
One thing I’ve been asked about a few times is the concern that my firearm could potentially be misrepresented as a toy gun. That’s a valid point, so I decided to address it:

The main reason I’m not concerned about this is because I think white is still technically a “professional” color. If you go to your search engine of choice and look up “real guns disguised as toys,” those are the kinds of firearms that we should be concerned about—there are some pretty absurd and ridic­ulous patterns, and some criminals are going as far as to paint the tips of their real guns neon orange to make them actually look fake. There are also red guns as well, which, as I mentioned before, could potentially be mistaken for a practice firearm.

Second, the main reason you would even want a disguised firearm is to deceive law enforcement. If I do ever end up in a situation where my firearm draws unwanted attention with law enforcement, I won’t actually be troubled at all. Having formerly worked in law enforcement, I know what to do when interacting with a peace officer while armed, and I have all the licenses I need to carry firearms.

 
… and yes, for all the CS:GO and other FPS players, this is indeed like having a “real-life skin” for my gun. No, you were not the first person to point that out.

I was going to write about this yesterday, but I was concerned that people might think I was pulling an April Fool’s prank, so I decided to wait until today instead…

On March 31, 2020 at 4:56 PM PDT, I felt my first high-rise earthquake.

There were some pretty severe earthquakes in Ridgecrest, CA nine months ago that should’ve been felt from Las Vegas, but I happened to be in Re­don­do Beach at that time, and I was in Tempo‘s PUBG team house rather than at home in my condo. There had been nothing too noticeable since then, until two days ago when I heard my building creaking and crackling.

For those who don’t know, I live in a high-rise condominimum complex on the Las Vegas Strip. I live in one of the upper units, putting me around 400 feet above ground level. High-rise buildings on the Pacific Coast have some pretty good anti-earthquake measures, but that doesn’t stop them from making discomforting sounds and swaying back and forth for a while.

After I noticed that my building was indeed dancing, the first thing that popped into my mind was whether Southern California was hit by “The Big One,” a nickname for the long-overdue catastrophic earthquake that’s an­tic­i­pated to cause $200 billion in damages along the San Andreas fault. Even though Las Vegas is hundreds of miles away from SoCal, we’re still going to experience some mild shaking when The Big One hits—though with no damage, obviously.

I messaged one of my co-workers a minute after I confirmed that there was indeed an earthquake happening somewhere, and asked him to check Twitter to see if our good friends in California were sending out distress signals. In the meantime, I was still scratching my head in confusion, wondering why my building was still rocking back and forth, and concluding that earthquakes are a lot spookier in high-rise buildings than I thought, because it takes a while for the building to become stationary again.

Not long after, my co-worker got back to me with an update from Twitter… apparently I had felt an earthquake that was epicentered in Idaho. … Idaho?

At this point, there were two possibilities. The first was that there was also an earthquake somewhere else at the very exact time, and it was just a massive coincidence that I had felt that different earthquake at the same time that a fairly severe one hit Idaho. The second possibility was that “a fairly severe one” was an understatement, and Idaho was basically liquefied mush at this point, because the earthquake was actually so strong that it was able to be felt from about 600 miles away.

I dug into it a bit afterwards, and apparently, I was wrong in both predictions. The United States Geological Survey did report an earthquake in Idaho, but it was a magnitude 6.5 epicentered 70 kilometers west of Challis.

Now wondering whether or not I was having hallucinations, I did my own searching on Twitter by querying the keyword “earthquake” and restricting geotagging to the Las Vegas Valley. I was relieved when I realized that I wasn’t the only one who felt it—other people on the Strip and in the downtown area also reported feeling the earthquake. (And of course, there was also the fair share of people claiming that we were lying just for the attention—which I don’t blame them for, because I agree that it seems pretty impossible that we felt that Idaho earthquake.)

I imagine that this is just going to end up being a part of high-rise life that I didn’t account for until just now. Similar to how a flick of the wrist while holding a whip can cause the loop of the whip to reach the speed of sound and create a sonic boom, it appears like even the slightest ground motion can send the top of a high-rise building rocking back and forth for a minute or two.