When I was younger, and before I got involved with the esports and video gaming work that led to and evolved into what I do today, I used to work in law enforcement. My Bachelor’s degree from university is in a field adjacent to the investigative aspect of law enforcement, and I was originally planning on becoming a prosecutor before deciding that becoming a lawyer would be too boring. More specifically, I worked at my local police department in the Chicagoland suburbs while I was still living with my parents.
It’s always a running joke that police and firefighters are rivals. This existed in my department as well—the police would always tease the firefighters about how we would always have to actively be running around on patrol, while the firefighters just relax at the fire station until they get called. Of course, this doesn’t account for the fact that the nature of the work of both professions is different, but we conveniently ignored that part.
Although there is the occasional memorial for fallen first responders, there aren’t too many full-blown museums dedicated to police officers and firefighters, so when I saw that there was one in Denver, Colorado—the Denver Firefighters Museum—I decided to check it out while I was in town.
Here are some photographs from my visit:
They had a collection of framed patches from each state, so of course, I had to scroll to Nevada. I was happy to find that they had patches from my fire departments back at home, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue and the Clark County Fire Department.
I thought this was a display of what the bathroom looked like at the old Denver Fire Department, but upon closer inspection, I found out that this was actually a functional bathroom, and the bathroom that was intended to be used by museum guests.
It seemed like a good chunk of the Denver Firefighters Museum was dedicated to teaching children about fire safety, which obviously wasn’t of particular interest to me, but was still a good use of resources to help educate the youth. Beyond that, there was also plenty of firefighting-related artifacts and relics on display that were interesting to look at. General admission was only US$9.00, which I think was a good deal for an hour and a half of exploration.
I don’t play video games that much anymore, but once in a while, I’ll still sign back on if a friend invites me to play.
Last year, my friend Doug Wreden and I played World of Warcraft: Classic hardcore on and off for about a month and had a pretty good time. It was a nostalgic experience for Doug; and for me, I enjoyed trying Classic for the first time and seeing from what the modern-day World of Warcraft evolved. I’m usually not a big fan of hardcore or permadeath game modes because I have very limited time to play games and I don’t want to constantly lose my progress and just do the starting area over and over again, but Doug finds softcore modes to be boring, and hardcore did technically add a lot more suspense and tension to the gameplay.
This year, Doug and I decided to join a guild called <OnlyFangs> and do another run of World of Warcraft: Classic in hardcore mode on the new realms released as part of the 20th Anniversary celebration. <OnlyFangs> is a guild generally reserved for Twitch streamers and other online content creators, and although I wouldn’t really consider myself to be a content creator, they were adding some additional twists to the gameplay to make it more interesting, so I still joined.
The guild has competitions among the different races, so naturally, as initiation for joining the guild, you have to take a sorting quiz to determine the race you’re allowed to play. I answered all the questions and ended up with Orc.
On the day of launch, I created an Orc Hunter and spawned into the Valley of Trials alongside hundreds of other players who had gotten in right as the servers opened.
Doug also created his character—a Troll Shaman named “TrugTrug,” a hybrid of “troll” and “DougDoug.” I just named myself “Parkzer,” but after seeing Doug’s character’s name, I regretted not naming myself “Orkzer” instead.
My first near-death experience promptly came at level 7 when Doug and I were on the Echo Isles questing. I wasn’t paying close-enough attention to World of Warcraft because I was distracted answering questions from my Twitch chat and I didn’t notice that my health was getting extremely low. I quickly ran away and dragged a Durotar Tiger into a group of other players in hopes that they would save me. Luckily, a fellow Orc named Orcadontis (who I imagine is a professional orthodontist) was nearby and finished off the tiger, saving my life.
And if you’re curious, the reason it says “YOU ARE LITERALLY TROLLING” and “RUN AWAY” in big letters on the center of my screen is because I use an add-on called WeakAuras, which allows you to make custom graphics that trigger based on conditions you specify. I set up an alert that blares an air horn and shows that bouncing text in the center of my screen in case I get low of health and don’t realize that I have to run away.
At level 10, Hunters gain the ability to tame a pet. Doug wanted his Twitch chat to be able to have agency over our gameplay, so he did a series of polls that determined that my first pet would be a crab named “Crabzer.”
… Crabzer promptly died because I sent him into a group of level 10 enemies when he was only level 6. Usually you can just revive your pet, but to add to the intensity of hardcore more, Doug wanted my pet to be hardcore as well. This meant Crabzer was dead forever. Doug required me to participate in a memorial ritual by removing all my armor and laying down (almost) naked next to Crabzer’s corpse.
My next pet was a crocodile named Croczer. Unsurprisingly, Croczer faced the same fate as Crabzer when we were in a cave and a random Mage pulled a ton of enemies, so I sent Croczer in to tank and he succumbed to overwhelming damage. … Yes, we did the same ritual for Croczer too.
It’s a running joke that I love to stop playing the main content and go off to fish in video games, specifically in MMORPGs where fishing is almost never the primary objective and is no more than a side task. World of Warcraft is no exception to this, so after Doug signed off for the night, I joined some of my Twitch viewers on a journey to Mulgore and Thunder Bluff because they said there were some nice, scenic fishing spots there.
The next day, Doug and I found a party of guildmates and cleared Ragefire Chasm, our first dungeon.
Later that night off-stream, I finally got a chance to level up my fishing. While in Orgrimmar, I was joined by Thor Hall from Pirate Software, with whom I had a pleasant chat using the Proximity Voice add-on. After reaching level 150 fishing, we took a ship and ventured to Booty Bay to purchase a special item—a book that would unlock the next tier of fishing. There is an overall level 20 requirement for that though in addition to the fishing level requirement, so I wasn’t yet able to read the book I had just bought.
On the fourth day of our adventure, we ran into an escort quest where the escortee has a very long respawn timer. In order to try and get as many people in on the quest as possible as to minimize the wait time, we partied up and invited someone from our guild as well. Hilariously, our guildmate had an add-on that automatically accepts, turns in, and advances all quests, so he managed to initiate the escort before Doug and I managed to turn in our quests and pick up the next one in the chain for the escort.
We stuck around for the respawn and waited for the next cycle. Being the brilliant, attentive, responsive gamer I am, I proceeded to miss turning in my quest for a second cycle in a row. Here I am eating a protein bar and realizing that the escortee was departing without me.
Back in town, I was reunited with Orcadontis, the guy who had saved me from the Durotar Tiger over ten levels ago.
He was roleplaying being ill and giving me dental advice with his dying breath, but my absolute favorite thing to do in roleplay scenarios is to pretend like I don’t understand what’s going on and breaking the fourth wall. As Orcadontis gasped that his death was approaching, I replied “no you’re fine, you’re at 100% health,” then walked away.
On day 5, we reached level 20 and learned our next set of important skills. For Doug’s Shaman, this was Ghost Wolf, a spell that turns him into wolf form and increases movement speed by 40%. For my Hunter, it was Aspect of the Cheetah, a spell that grants me 30% increased movement speed at the cost of being dazed for four seconds if I take damage while in cheetah form. Note that Ghost Wolf is materially and substantially better than Aspect of the Cheetah.
After doing a round of quests, Doug and I were returning to town. I had my character set to auto-follow Doug while I was answering questions from my Twitch chat. Doug said that he was going to run through a group of enemies, so I mindlessly said “ok” and continued talking with Twitch chat.
Remember how I mentioned that, not only is my movement speed buff weaker than Doug’s, but I also get dazed when I get hit? Doug was able to run through the enemies fine, but when I ran in after him, I got hit once and got slowed to a fraction of my movement speed.
From here, I had a truly next-level reaction to what was happening, composed of the following series of events:
Spend five seconds looking around in confusion, trying to gauge how much trouble I am actually in.
Spend an additional three seconds tabbing over to Discord to unmute myself so I can tell Doug I am in trouble.
Try to kill the thing that is attacking me, then give up after two seconds.
Try to turn off Aspect of the Cheetah so enemy attacks stop refreshing my daze, but realize that the hotkey I assigned to that was Alt+0, which is impossible for me to hit without either taking my left fingers off the movement keys or taking my right hand off my mouse.
Bring my mouse pointer down to click the Aspect of the Cheetah button to turn it off, but misclick and start channeling Mend Pet instead.
Finally click the correct button to turn off Aspect of the Cheetah, though not before having my daze reset for another 4 seconds.
Try to run away, then realize that the retreat path I was taking was directly towards another camp filled with five more enemies.
Use a health potion, but then forget to use the two other items on my hotbar that would have rooted an enemy and healed me more, thus potentially increasing my chances of survival.
Run off a cliff to try and de-aggro the now four enemies carving line art into my back.
Try to land on a small platform not too far down, miss, slide down the whole face of the entire cliff, then die of fall damage.
And the best part? Doug would have been perfectly fine, but after I unmuted and let him know that I had aggro, he turned around and ran back into the gargantuan group of enemies to try and help me. Even better, note that I had already wasted eight seconds at that point, so he was very far away and it’s not like there was anything he could’ve done anymore anyway.
He also died.
From what I gathered during my post-death debriefing session with Doug, when he announced that he was going to run through a group of enemies, what I was supposed to do was stop following him, split off from him, go all the way around the group of enemies via a different path by myself, and meet back up with him in town afterwards.
This was a pretty ridiculous way to die, and I’m going to be traveling soon anyway, so I’m not too disappointed at our demises. Many hardcore deaths are fairly anti-climactic (e.g., you’re fighting something and just end up taking too much damage too quickly and suddenly die out of nowhere), so I feel like this was definitely one of the more interesting ways for our run to end.
We’re not going to be creating new characters right away, though I guess there’s nothing stopping us from trying again at some point in the future…
I recently realized that, for some reason, I never posted photographs from my tour. Considering that I haven’t been doing much for the past few weeks and haven’t had anything particularly notable to blog about, I figured now would be a good time to share these pictures to fill in the lull.
The only sports I ever really watch are combat sports, so it was nice being able to get a behind-the-scenes look at a traditional ball sport stadium.
My main takeaway from the tour was that sports stadiums like this basically have the same premise as commercial planes, in that there a lot of “economy” seats where people are crammed together in a small space, but then there are extremely expensive, luxurious, over-the-top “first class” sections for people who are superfans and want to spend a ton of money. I got to check out the private viewing rooms, lounges, and clubs, and they seemed like pretty nice environments from which to enjoy some American football.
This tour didn’t convert me into a football fan, but it did make me realize that, as long as I’m not squished in a regular seat, I wouldn’t mind checking out a game sometime.
A couple months ago, Burger King revealed the Mexican Street Corn, Fried Pickle Ranch, and Maple Bourbon BBQ Whoppers in a press release covering the Million Dollar Whopper Contest. In summary, people from across the United States proposed their own ideas for special Whoppers, and the top three recipes actually went into production so that customers can vote for which is the best.
I’ve always been more of a McDonald’s person than a Burger King person, and I actually don’t even remember how many years it’s been since I’ve last been at a Burger King (before this trip, obviously), but I like trying out new foods and innovative dishes, so I decided to try four Whoppers—one of each of the new Whoppers, plus one classic Whopper as a baseline.
In central Las Vegas, each of the new Whoppers costs US$6.99 for the entrée (i.e., just for the sandwich, and not as a meal or combo), but there is a special digital-exclusive deal called the “Million Dollar Whopper® Flight” that lets you buy all three at a discounted rate of US$18.99, saving US$1.98, if you order ahead online. A regular Whopper comes in at US$5.89, which brings the total to US$24.88 before taxes. Note that this is region-specific pricing, so your Whoppers may be more or less expensive than mine.
In order to give as balanced of a review as possible, I followed a controlled methodology for taste testing. I split each Whopper into fourths. I ate one quarter of each fresh Whopper, one after another, then ate another quarter of each fresh Whopper, again, one after another. Afterwards, half of each Whopper remained. I took the leftovers and refrigerated them for eight hours, and once I was no longer satiated, I retrieved and microwaved them all together for two minutes. For the second half of the taste test, I repeated the cycle—two rounds of eating a quarter of each Whopper per round until I was done.
In no particular order, first up is the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, fried pickles, pickle ranch, bacon, lettuce, and Swiss cheese.
This burger was unbelievably salty to the point where it felt like the inside of my mouth itself was getting pickled. I think a lot of the sodium might have been concentrated in the Swiss cheese, but either way, it made for a pretty unpleasant experience.
I’m generally fine with fresh pickles and will sometimes even request pickles on sandwiches that don’t usually come with pickles because I think they add a nice kick to the flavor profile, but these fried pickles were something else… in a not-so-great way. This Whopper might be great for someone who likes fried pickles, but I think they just aren’t my thing.
This Whopper was the one that had the sharpest decline in quality after refrigeration and reheating. I didn’t really want to finish the second half of this Whopper after microwaving it, but for the sake of not wasting food, I removed all the fried pickles and scraped off as much Swiss cheese as possible, which made it a bit more palatable for me.
Overall, the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper was my least favorite out of the four.
Next is the Mexican Street Corn Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, Southwest seasoned tortilla crisps, Mexican spicy queso, street corn spread, lettuce, and tomato.
The most straightforward and easy way to put this is that this was like a ground beef taco in the form of a burger. Upon my initial bite, I was going to say that it basically tastes like a normal Whopper but with Fritos® inside, but after I started recognizing more of the flavor of the sauces, I realized it was definitely a distinct and unique Whopper, and not just a regular Whopper with one extra topping on it.
Out of the three new Whoppers, this one was my favorite.
Last but not least out of the new Whoppers is the Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, bacon, American cheese, crispy onions and jalapeños, maple bourbon barbecue sauce, and maple bacon seasoning.
This most resembled a menu item that I would expect to see on a fast food restaurant’s permanent menu. I can’t really think of any specific menu items or restaurants off the top of my head, but this was basically the same as a Texan-style BBQ cheeseburger that I’d find at a burger joint. The components of the Whopper worked well together and formed a cohesive and complementary flavor profile.
The reason why this wasn’t my favorite Whopper was because the barbecue sauce was way too sweet. I also don’t think the sauce was applied to the burger in the most effective way. Instead of splitting it so that it makes direct contact with both the toppings and the base of the patty, it was only spread on the top bun. This meant that the sauce wasn’t really absorbed by the beef patty, but it was extra absorbed by the bacon and crispy onions, so the bacon tasted like candied bacon and the crispy onions were a bit soggy.
And finally, serving as the control group, I also ordered a regular Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, sliced white onions, mayonnaise, and ketchup between a toasted sesame seed bun.
I don’t know if this was just the nostalgia kicking in from when I would eat Whoppers once in a while as a kid, but in my opinion, this was overwhelmingly the best Whopper.
This had the most vegetables, which gave the sandwich the most refreshing overall flavor profile. I love raw onions, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was trying to do as unbiased of a review as possible of these unmodified Whoppers, I would’ve asked for extra onions. Mayonnaise is my favorite condiment, but I haven’t had much of it over the past few years since I found out that I have high cholesterol and need to minimize my saturated fat consumption; that fact might’ve caused tasting the mayo in this Whopper to be extra satisfying.
As a disclaimer, even though I go to fast food restaurants somewhat often, I usually order basic and straightforward sandwiches with either beef, chicken, or fish as the meat and a balanced portion of vegetables. I try to avoid fried foods, I don’t like bacon, and I think most cheeses smell like mold and sometimes make me want to vomit. Thus, I think it’s reasonable to say that I have a “cleaner” palate, and my opinions on these Whoppers would probably align closer with people in similar situations as myself, as opposed to people who might be more used to foods with more intense and explosive flavors.
I’m glad I tried the Million Dollar Whopper® Flight, not only because it was nice participating in a limited-time event, but also because this reminded me that I am most compatible with and should probably just stick with chicken and fish sandwiches like I usually do.
While in Seattle, I visited my friend Dani at her condo and got reunited with Mina, her domestic shorthair cat. I’ve previously featured pictures of Mina on my blog in the posts “Hello, Mina” and “Hello again, Mina.” It’s been over two years since I last shared photographs of her though, so during this trip, I did a nice, long photo shoot so everyone can see plenty of Mina.
Like usual, I still add at least a day or two of buffer before and after travel days when I go to a different city, so when I went to Seattle for the Sea-Meow Convention, I had some extra days in town to spend together with friends. On one of the days, I got dinner with Dani at 2120, a New American restaurant in downtown next to Amazon’s Spheres.
(Note: The lighting in this restaurant was very dim, and these photos were taken with my phone, so they’re not quite up to the same level of quality as many of my other food pictures.)
As our first appetizer, we got steak tartare made from prime New York beef topped with shallot, extra virgin olive oil, parsley, egg yolk, and pickled mustard seed with a side of house-made potato chips.
Steak tartare is often served with bread, so it was interesting to see it served with potato chips here. I think chips would be fine if it accompanied beef that was particularly strong or gamey, as the fried flavor of the chips would pierce through the beefiness. However, this steak had a smooth and mild flavor—which, in itself, is good—but I think it would’ve worked much better with plain bread, as the potato chips ended up being a bit overwhelming for this. Adjacently, I think chips would work if the beef was bland, but this tartare was properly seasoned, so the chips just ended up adding a bit too much saltiness to the overall flavor profile.
For our beverages, we ordered two drinks from the zero-proof menu: Dani ordered a No Bucks Given made from cranberry compote, ginger syrup, and fresh lime juice mixed into a soda base; and I got a Pear Citrus Spritz made from pear compote and fresh lemon with a soda base.
My pear drink demonstrated a peculiar flavor profile phenomenon in which, if I drank a normal sip, it would just taste like I was drinking lemon juice with no pear, but if I took a tiny sip to the extent that it was only enough to just barely wet my tongue, I would be able to identify the pear flavor with almost no lemon.
Our next appetizer was a half dozen Washington oysters served on half-shells with a side of apple cider mignonette. These were solid oysters with a pure taste and refreshing texture.
As our side to along with our main entrées, Dani wanted to try the beet salad with roasted pear, pistachio, whipped chèvre, and cranberry vinaigrette.
It surprisingly wasn’t bad, but there’s only so much you can do with beets, so it wasn’t particularly delicious.
Our first main dish was grilled octopus with serrano and white bean purée, chili flakes, sautéed kale, chickpeas, and burnt orange gastrique.
This would have been my favorite dish of the restaurant if it wasn’t about four times saltier than it needed to be. I could tell that the octopus had a deep, rich flavor and the texture was incredibly soft and tender, but because it was egregiously oversalted, it bordered on being bitter.
Next was smoked salmon rillette with parsley, pickled red onion, fried caper, chive oil, lemon, and aioli with a side of crostini.
This was fine and was technically exactly what the menu said it was, but I guess I didn’t really quite properly grasp what rillette was, because it wasn’t what I was expecting. This dish sort of tasted like I just opened some really high-end canned salmon dip and ate it as a spread on bread.
The density of the crostini was a bit too low. … In simpler terms, there were too many holes in the bread. I would’ve appreciated it if the bread contained more bread.
For our carb dish, we ordered house-made oxtail pappardelle with rosemary, pecorino romano, heavy cream, lemon, and oxtail jus.
This pasta came out with way too much Parmesan cheese on it. I’m not a fan of cheese, especially the types that smell extra moldy like Parmesan does, so that single-handedly ruined the dish for me. I think it would’ve been a lot better if they added fresh Parmesan tableside, because then I would’ve been able to decline it. I couldn’t really tell how the pasta was because all I could taste was the cheese, so I wasn’t really able to objectively assess the dish.
Our final entrée of the night was seared scallops with pickled shimeji, celery root purée, Japanese eggplant, and chili oil.
Dani had a portion of this dish and brought the rest back home to give to her housemates, so I only sampled half a scallop. The portion I did have was great—the scallop was thick, tender, and rich with flavor. However, almost every other component of the dish was a bit too earthy to the point of being bitter.
For dessert, we ordered some Olympic Mountain pear-raspberry sorbet.
This was a refreshing conclusion to our meal. It had a good balance of pear and raspberry flavor, and it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. The portion size was also satisfyingly large, and was way more than you’d get at an ice cream shop for the price.
I took some photos of the restaurant. It looks empty because we were one of the first reservations of the day and I snapped these pictures on my way to the restroom right after we arrived, but by the time we were done dining, the restaurant was pretty full and bustling.
Steak tartare
$ 19.00
Half dozen Washington oysters
$ 24.00
Beet salad
$ 16.00
Grilled octopus
$ 23.00
Smoked salmon rillette
$ 16.00
Oxtail pappardelle
$ 34.00
Seared scallops
$ 42.00
Olympic Mountain pear-raspberry sorbet
$ 6.50
No Bucks Given & Pear Citrus Spritz
$ 16.00
Sales tax
$ 20.15
Gratuity
$ 35.37
Total
$ 252.02
The table on the right shows how much we paid for our meal.
Although 2120 wasn’t a bad restaurant, I thought it was a little bit underwhelming across the board. They market themselves as fine dining, but I think they spent too much on the perception and presentation of the restaurant, and not enough on improving the dishes.
Usually, I’m able to get a general gist of the theme of what I enjoyed or what I think could be improved, but I couldn’t really come up with something like that for 2120. It seems like my likes and dislikes were quite scattered, with different kinds of compliments and critiques being applicable for different dishes (which explains why my dish-by-dish feedback above was fairly diverse).
I found the environment of the restaurant to be pleasant, and I had no complaints about the service. However, the only menu item I found to be worth the money was the sorbet, with everything else not quite meeting expectations at their respective pricepoints.
I guess it is possible that I was so unlucky that I somehow only picked their mediocre dishes and managed to avoid all their specialties or something, but based on my dining experience this day, I think there are a lot of other restaurants I would recommend before this one.
