Back from Vacation

10:00 AM

I'm back from vacation. I had six days with Wahl and it was one of the best experiences of my entire life. I enjoyed every moment of it. I'm surprised that it's over and that it ended, because while it was happening, it felt like it would never end and that I was having the time of my life. I guess this is a good analogy for life overall, that nothing ever lasts. This is a truth I've basically always known, but it wasn't something I reflected much on.

The life of Steve Jobs was brilliant. I've read his biography, and he was a very brilliant person, that went through life and hardships like the rest of us, but he knew what he wanted, and he never faltered in his convictions. Pretty much everything he did was successful. He made the companies Apple, Pixar, and NeXT, and each one became successful. NeXT is hardly ever heard of, but its operating system is the basis and origin of OS X, and OS X is what powers all Apple devices today. Pixar was Lucas Arts' animation division or something before Steve Jobs purchased it from George Lucas, renamed it to Pixar, and pivoted the company's goals to making full length animated films.

At the time, there was no profitable animation company that was purely about animation, or something like that. Or maybe it was something like no animation company in the past 50 years ever became profitable, or something like that. But Pixar was the exception. A purely animation company, that became a hit with its first film Toy Story. Obviously other people had a role in Pixar as well, such as John Lasseter, and other big names at Pixar. But I think Pixar prior to Steve Jobs' death in 2011, was the best Pixar. It definitely did go downhill after Steve's death.

We all know the big Pixar films like Toy Story 1 to 3, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars 1 and 2, Wall-E, Up, and Ratatouille, all of these films released during Steve Job's reign as CEO of Pixar. Yeah he ran both Apple and Pixar at the same time, and turned Apple into the world's most valued company at the same time, but we'll get to Apple later. These films all came out during Steve Job's time. What movies released after? Brave, Monsters University, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3 (I admit this one was good too), Coco, The Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Soul, and whatever else, I've never heard of. These new films that came out were never as good. Maybe they might have more sales though due to the increase in population and more people watching it, but the classics are still better in story and everything else.

The reason why the Pixar films were so animal friendly too such as Finding Nemo having sharks that said "fish are friends not food", Ratatouille being about a vegan dish (ratatouille is a vegan dish), Wall-E being about climate change, is because Steve Jobs himself was vegan. I read his biography, he had a fully vegan wedding in the 1980s or whenever his wedding was, he would complain about animal products like butter being in dishes, he commented negatively about dairy publicly in one of his keynotes, and he was fruitarian for various periods throughout his entire life. He did die young of cancer though, he tried to fast and juice detox his cancer away, but it didn't work. A sad end to one of the most brilliant minds the world has ever witnessed.

The like of Elon Musk couldn't even compare. Elon Musk is today's biggest tech celebrity, he was like how Steve Jobs was back in the day. However, unlike Steve Jobs, it's arguable to say Elon Musk accomplished nothing. He was never part of the company called "PayPal" because he was kicked out before the company was renamed to PayPal. He bought the company Tesla from two other people, and named himself the founder, and he hasn't really done much with it despite so much money from investors and the government. He has less sales in all his years than like a month's worth of Toyota car sales, but his company is valued more than Toyota and perhaps all other car companies combined, which makes no sense. His company SpaceX uses billions of money from the government but isn't able to do things that 1960s NASA was able co accomplish, all he does is blow up rockets in space, wasting taxpayers billions.

The person Thunderf00t on YouTube has done a lot of videos on Elon Musk debunking him and all of his claims. Since 2017 Elon Musk has said "we have self driving cars, this is something we can to today" when I think he referred to a car being self-driven from CA to NY, but even as of 2024 his cars can't do this. He is just an endless parody, but people believe him. He will just make claims and people just suck it up.

On the other hand, Steve Jobs only made claims once the products were actually made. And each product he made was brilliant. Not all of them were successful, but most of them were. Pretty much anything he touched and released became a hit. His Apple Stores for example became like one of the most successful retail businesses of all time, shortly after he made one. When he entered the music industry, he turned Apple into like the most successful music company at the time or something like that. When he entered the mobile phone industry, again he revolutionized it, and every other company in the world wanted to copy everything he did. This is while running two companies at the same time, both of them became the best in their areas, Pixar actually surpassed Disney and all the other animation companies to become the most successful animation company in the world.

Everything he touched turned to gold. Yet his era ended. I mean it seem shallow for me to compare these six days of my life with Wahl to all of Steve Job's brilliant life, but I am just making the point that everything comes to an end. Steve Jobs' time period was revolutionary but it ended. My six days with Wahl was some of the best moments of my life but ended. My life will eventually come to an end too. It's something we have to admit and face.

2:59 PM

Two anime I enjoyed recently are Shangri-La Frontier and this anime called "I was Reincarnated as the 7th Son so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability". The latter has a really long name so we can shorten it to just The 7th Son anime.

Shangri-La Frontier is surprisingly good. It's an anime about an online game in the anime called Shangri-La Frontier, yeah the name of the anime is derived from a game in the anime, just like Sword Art Online is about the game called Sword Art Online in the anime called Sword Art Online. The artwork and storyline are pretty good. The artwork is seriously high quality and the battle scenes are fast paced and detailed. The biggest props I give it are for the artwork, they're some of the best I've seen in any anime.

The main character of Shangri-La Frontier is overpowered as with every other anime that ever existed. He's overpowered in the way that he's played a lot of terrible and glitchy games and he's beaten them all, but Shangri-La Frontier is the first game he's played that isn't terrible, and so, he transfers those skills he learned from the terrible games into dominating Shangri-La Frontier. What I don't like about it all that much is that it's basically a solo game, it's basically just him dominating every enemy he faces, most of them NPC's of course, and getting the best items and skills. It is kind of boring because of the fame factor, like even though he's this dominating player in the game, barely anyone in the game knows who he is.

At some point he does complete an event that gets his name known to everyone in the game, but it's a very shortlived event. It shows other players existing only for like a minute or so, and then he goes back to his solo playing. It is really boring because it feels like he's just alone the whole time, even though he does play with NPCs and they are some of the best characters. Like I like Emmel, he's an awesome character, but the fact that he's barely known while he dominates this game, is what makes it kind of boring to me.

On the other hand, The 7th Son is the most exciting anime I've seen in a while. It is fast paced and stars the most overpowered Isekai (Japanese for reincarnated in another world or transferred to another world) character I've ever seen. Isekai is its own genre now. There's so many anime that stars a character transferred to another world. Actually I've tried to write my own Isekai before, back in 2019. I created a character that was as most overpowered as I could imagine. The light novel is called "Isekai Wa Overpowered" and it was written in February 2019, it's findable on Scribble Hub. I tried to just parody the already existing Isekai at the time, and I was years ahead of everyone else yet again. This "overpowered" theme just became more and more dominant up to today where we now have The 7th Son anime.

So The 7th Son anime, from the moment this guy reincarnates into this other world, he is able to blow up a large portion of this castle from his like first few seconds being conscious as a baby. When he's 7 to 10 years old, somewhere around there, he was able to cast a spell that he aimed at the sky, and it destroyed the atmosphere. I think he's just so overpowered because there was this demon he encounters, and everyone fears this demon, and the demon wasn't even able to damage him at all. This guy is a kid, a beginner with magic, but he's beating demons everyone else is afraid of.

In Isekai, overpoweredness is a theme. It's a necessity I think. Like in my light novel "Isekai Wa Overpowered", I just gave the main character every god ability I could think of. The main character can do anything. But what my story lacked is the world building like The 7th Son has. In the 7th Son, yeah the main character is overpowered, but it explains the concept of magic and so on, and how he's so good at it. Actually that's never explained. He just has more magical ability than anyone who has ever lived. But anyway, it's still a good story. It's my current favorite.

11:58 PM

I don't even know why I wrote several paragraphs just about Steve Jobs and anime, since that has nothing to do with me being back from vacation, but that's what I pivoted to for some reason. These are stream of consciousness entries after all, and I write whatever comes to mind.

Today was a pretty good day. I replied to Mary, and she replied back to me. I haven't read her messages yet, but she's likely coming to visit me again next month, a day after her birthday. I have to learn how to bake a cake so I can make that for her, and I ordered a present for her on Amazon today. It takes like a week or two for delivery from Amazon to arrive here in PR even with the fastest shipping. A "two day shipping" option isn't even available here, but it is available in Virginia. Anything I want to order for her, I need to order within today and tomorrow, for it to arrive on time before her arrival.

I started this habit of walking for 5 minutes every 30 minutes, and also doing some exercises after. Instead of just doing 8 pull ups, 8 chin ups, 40 push ups, 30 leg raises per day, I started doing 2 pull ups, 2 chin ups, 10 push ups, 10 leg raises, and 10 squats, every 30 minutes after walking for 5 minutes. I can't do this throughout the day yet, because I do start to feel fatigue after 5-6 hours, but that still gives me around 6000 steps, 20 pull ups, 20 chin ups, 100 push ups, 100 leg raises, 100 squats throughout the day.

The 5 minutes of walking every 30 minutes is like a pomodoro. In a pomodoro, you do a task for 25 minutes, and then take a break for 5 minutes, and then work again for 25 minutes, and so on, and you just keep repeating it throughout the day. From what I've read, even the most productive people can only do this for around 4 hours at the most. They can't keep it up throughout the day, at least, based on the anecdotal experiences I've read from very productive people. I think I can eventually build up to being able to do something like that throughout the day, or maybe I'm being delusional about it.

Anyway I'm sleepy. There's a lot more I want to write in this entry, and there's a lot more I want to do in life overall, but I"m very sleepy now, and I have to go to sleep. I'll continue this again tomorrow. i still have to write my entries for my six days with Wahl, and publish those too. I could have done that today. Instead, I think I ended up just wasting a bunch of time.

Anyway that was my day today.