A Nice Day

11:09 PM

Today has been a pretty good day. I had work today, but it was very chill since it's right before Thanksgiving.

I played some Civilizations 6 today, having bought it from a Humble Bundle last night, and it was an alright game. I uninstalled it and quit it forever after around 3 hours of playing. It takes forever to play through a whole game, and I had barely gotten anywhere, maybe bronze age but I don't even know. There's so many nuances and tech trees that's it's easy to get lost in. I'm not expert enough to know every single resource, diplomacy, form of government, research tree, unit, building, and so on.

The winning conditions for Civ 6 are many, you can win by conquering all your enemies or fully researching a tech tree or many other victory conditions. I think it takes like 7-8 hours of playing to reach the end of a game, often longer. It's the same exact game as Civ 5 basically, which I played probably more than a decade ago. The graphics aren't much better. There's a lot more things to do in the game thanks to the expansion packs that came with the bundle, but it's still just alright, it's still basically all the same old things. The basic gameplay is just too boring. So I quit and uninstalled it.

I know I quit video games forever, but I still do rarely play them like just now. Maybe once every 4 months, I play something. It's incredibly rare. There are things I learn from video games, and that's the only reason I play them, to learn and experience something new and different. I felt like being the ruler of a civilization for a while, so I played Civ 6. It turns out to be very complicated, and too much for me. It's not applicable much to real life either.

So I actually did search for a game that could be applicable to real life, similar to Habitica, and I found a bunch of alternatives and installed them. They are pretty cool, pretty much the same concept, you make a to do list and you get experience points and level up in the app. None of them were really good enough for me. One of them was interesting though, it basically allowed you to customize your own life as an RPG. You make all the stats yourself, it could be Bravery, Compassion, Intelligence, and you come up with skills that are improved, like Push-Ups and Programming. Completing a "quest" (a to do list item or daily), can grant you exp in that skill, which you can level up in.

It's a very interesting app, but it doesn't have the tracking I need. With Strides, I can see how many push ups I did any day of the week. I can't do that with this app, it doesn't have anything close to that feature. So Strides still wins for my dailies. I hope they have a Black Friday sale, then I can get the lifetime version for something less than $80.

I installed this other app and it had something similar to the Challenges feature that Habitica has. Actually, it's called Challenges too. Anyway, I made a vegan challenge. The first task asked you to meditate on your values, do you consider yourself a kind person, someone that would never hurt an animal? If so, then is it okay to pay people to hurt animals? How many animals are killed for you, is it an activity you enjoy?

The second task was to eat a vegan meal. It could be something as simple as a fruit, or a potato (french fries, hash browns, chips, etc), or a PB&J sandwich, or rice and beans, or any food or snack as long as it doesn't have any animal parts or secretions.

The third task was to go vegan grocery shopping. I put in tips on how to scan the label to see if something is vegan in just a few seconds. Does it have any cholesterol? If so, it's not vegan, plant foods have no cholesterol. In the allergies list, does it have eggs or dairy? If so, it's not vegan. In the ingredients, is there honey or gelatin? If so, it's not vegan. And that's basically it for 99% of the foods, just looking for these five things filters out nearly everything if it's vegan or not. Of course it also makes sense to check the rest of the ingredients for any other animal products.

The fourth task was to eat at a vegan restaurant. If there aren't any, then eat at a vegetarian restaurant and try to get only the vegan options, or ask to veganize some of the other options. If there aren't any vegetarian restaurants either, then to just skip this or try again at a different location later.

The fifth task was to get a B12 supplement. I put in how it's a nutrient made by bacteria, and that it's often found in animal flesh and fortified foods like cereals and sports drinks. That there are some plant foods that have it too, such as duckweed and some other seaweeds, but they are rare. It can also be found in unwashed vegetables with dirt, or unfiltered lake and river water, but these are not safe to consume. Would you rather supplement or stab an animal in the throat? There are ways to get B12 without either, but it could be unsafe, so it's easiest and makes the most sense to just supplement.

The sixth task was to try to only buy vegan items as practicably as possible. So no items such as leather, wool, feathers, etc. Sometimes it's not possible to avoid, like a car might have some parts have animal skin even if you don't want it to. In my own car I think the stick shift has the cover made from animal skin, though a girl I went out with in 2021 told me it's not.

And the last task was just to congratulate them that they now understand how easy it is to be vegan and to just live this lifestyle for the rest of their life if possible. It's pretty simple logic, if someone is against animal exploitation and cruelty, then they simple don't take part in it. That's really it.

I walked outside today and I exercised at the gym. It was really relaxing walking outside.

The cold is strange. When it's cold out, I don't feel like doing anything except just staying in bed all day. At the same time, once I do get out, for a few minutes I feel like just going back in and never coming back out again. But once I got to walking outside, everything felt nice and calm, and when I got to the gym and when I got back home, I was very productive.

I read a theory that we are more productive in the cold. I don't even know if that's true. I live in the tropics, and I feel like the cold makes me not want to go out and do anything. At the same time, I think I actually am more productive when it's cold. I've gotten a lot of my life accomplishments done here, in this cold weather in Virginia. So maybe it is true? I also accomplished a decent amount in Puerto Rico too. So I guess it might not be true?

Anyway, that was my day today. Time to sleep.