Celebrating my birthday | Monthly Report

Monthly report

_{June 2022}

June is one of the best months of the year ;), at least that's what I think. Mostly because this is the month when it is my birthday. Even though I don't celebrate my birthday, @lackofcolor surely made sure to celebrate it. In this Monthly report, I'll be sharing what I did and what kept me busy.

Let's start with my birthday!

So, this year, I turned 34. Holy smokes, I'm getting old. And I must share with you; I'm feeling it. My body is slowly showing signs of me getting older. Which sucks of course, but hey, what can we do about it, other than trying to enjoy life as much as possible. Even though @lackofcolor is really sick, she puts in a lot of effort in making me feel as if it was my birthday. This is an extremely difficult case since I hate my birthday and I don't like surprises. That being said; she surprised me. And not just on my birthday, but she organized and launched a little 3-day-long birthday campaign for me.

_{Our not-yet-my-birthday-birthday-pancakes}

I hate to say it, but waking up every day with a gift or a gesture felt kinda good. Especially because she is going through a hard time. I guess that's what birthdays are also about; caring for a loved one.

And... let's continue with another birthday!

In my last update, I was talking about me organizing an event for Handstand. They turned 11 (ha! youngsters!) and wanted to celebrate big time since COVID19 made sure to miss out on earlier birthday events. The event itself was a lot of fun! Organizing and planning the whole thing (for the first time) was scary at first, but once I fully devoted myself and I got the hang of it, it was a lot of fun (and a lot easier than I thought it would be)!

Every time, when Handstand is organizing an event, they take the opportunity to make the world a better place. This year, they decided to support Trashpackers. An initiative was created by a Dutch rapper from Hengelo. Other than supporting this with their savings, they asked the people that showed up to donate to this initiative instead of giving a birthday present.

(de)Signing

It felt good to design again. I just had to design signs to show attending people the way. These are things we usually don't think about when we attend a party ourselves, simply because it is -so easy to understand- and our brain is designed to follow easy instructions. I also made two posters for the elevator. We had a party elevator, and a Zen elevator (for the posters)

_{Inhale, Exhale}

_{tricky one: Destined to elevate}

Uninstalling Path of Exile after 8+ years

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed some Tweets about Path of Exile. After they made the mistake of sending me a refund twice (I didn't even know), they decided to lock my account and send some flags to my Steam account without even contacting me. I've spent about a week communicating with Steam, PayPal, and Path of Exile to solve this as smoothly as possible, but without any luck.

While the first two parties were very helpful, Path of Exile started to point fingers at me and made it clear that I was in the wrong and not them. This without going to the trouble of inspecting my purchasing history. If they did, they would've seen that I've spent around 1000$ on MTX to support the development of the game over the course of many years and that I'm a loyal player/true fan.

They closed my account over a mere 17,60 EUR, money that I was more than happy to return until they called me a thief. They demanded me to take actions that would've required me to spend my time while they could've just unlocked my account so I could spend the same 17,60 on points which they could deduct from my balance later.

If you have some time to spare; I wrote the whole story here. This is why we need more decentralized gaming platforms, where players and users will always remain to have true ownership over their purchases. Currently, I'm struggling with the idea of whether I should or shouldn't write an article about this while tagging this Path of Exile experience along the way, any thoughts?

New coffee machine!

Holy shit, it was about time! Can't even believe how I was able to drink coffee from the old machine... That thing was broken AF. My stepdad had coffee once and threw it away because he thought it tasted like water. I laughed at him because he always drinks Senseo. I mean, you can hardly call that coffee man xD.

At first, I thought it was the "premium" beans we have, we have these Wakuli beans which aren't roasted that much. Thought they did a really good job on making it taste "less bitter"... lmao, I feel stupid when I think about it. The ignorance...

Apparently, the coffee machine was broken, and couldn't even pour proper coffee since the day I moved in with Lackofcolor. How can you blame a man, if he goes from strength 10 to 6? You got to adjust your hopes and dreams when you do such a thing. On top of that, it was light-roasted beans (I used to drink strength 10 dark roast coffee). Ha-ha, wellllll o well... the jokes on me.

So, we got this super nice machine that makes a great cup of coffee. I was already wondering why I didn't get that 'woke' feeling after sipping a cup full o'black magic. What a difference. Praise the manufacturers. Thank you. I don't even care I've been drinking weak 6-strength coffee, it tastes much better than the garbage that I had for over a year.

Gaming

V Rising

I've been playing some V Rising with two other friends. The game is pretty cool. Even though it is still in beta (I believe), the progression, while you play, feels quite balanced. The only downside is that servers die out pretty quickly, which can make it feel a bit boring while you progress. The real fun is when you encounter enemies, you have this feeling of competition and feel the need to protect your base with layers of defense. A cool mechanic this game has to offer is that mobility is reduced as you try to walk during the day when the Sun is out.

With V Rising, you play as a vampire. You rely on blood, which you need to take from innocent peasants and encounters. Another cool trait is that there is a variety of blood types, each with its own unique characteristics that offer benefits as it depletes over time.

Not sure if it would be a game I would play non-stop, but certainly, a game to check out from time to time.

Anno 1800

I've been playing a little bit of Anno, and I am looking forward to getting back into the game a bit more. A friend and I had a plan to play it again, but he has been super busy with work, so we could only play once. With all these DLC's the game can get super complex and challenging. A lot more fun and a lot more time-consuming as well. Maybe I should consider setting up a plan for shorter sessions of gameplay. Like having smaller progression goals and then pause before continuing the game any further.

Rebranding to Web 3.0

These last couple of months I've been doing a lot of reading and researching around the topics of Defi, GameFi, Web 3.0, and how it is possible to prepare for a Web 3.0-ready business. It's becoming more clear every time I attempt to write about it (a rabbit hole that gets easily complicated), or when I read more about it. Damn, the space is a wonderful thing, and I'm glad to be in it. Let's see if it is possible to make a 100% Web 3.0 business.

Browsing on web 2.0-based platforms can be very informative as well. The way how I see it "Web 3.0 people love it so much, they only stay on Web 3.0" versus "Web 2.0 people that heard/read about Web 3.0, remain on Web 2.0 platforms, and spread half-accurate information about 3.0". This presents itself as both a problem and an opportunity. We learn that 2.0 is picking up 3.0, but doesn't have all the information required to properly introduce others to 3.0. The opportunity is for "us" 3.0 people to properly educate and start making (more) noise #hiveisalive!

Most of the time, I've been brain-farting and always got back to the Hive Blockchain, there are -so many- ways to implement the Hive blockchain in everyday use. I just don't have the technical knowledge on how to do it, and it came to my attention to be very wary of people whom you share it with, as they may have centralized ideas (unaware or fully aware).

HIVE goals

Since this is a Monthly report, I think it might be a good thing to set and include my HIVE goals (financially).

Even though I'm nearly there, I'm trying to make my way back to 10K HIVE, I'm planning to hold between 1000-5000 LEO as well. While those goals are just targets that don't require much attention, I'm more interested in sharing my HBD goals. Why? Because I honestly feel (no financial advice) that more people should stock up and save some HBD. Currently, HBD is mostly being used to sell and buy other cryptos. By rewarding those who save, HBD becomes way more valuable than just selling and buying other cryptos. I think this may spark an opportunity for HBD to develop more utilizing properties in the long run. For example, I'd be more than happy to accept HBD for work.

The last couple of weeks I've been stacking my HBD rewards. By sending these rewards to my savings account, I'm currently receiving 20% APR, which is about $3-4 HBD per month. The goal is to receive about 500-1000 HBD per month which means I have to stake between 30,000 - 60,000 HBD, but that's a target. That's a long way to go.

Currently, the HBD pool pays out about 55K HBD per month, this also translates into 3,300,000 HBD being locked (and being removed from liquidity).

I think that the 20% APR is huge, and an appropriate reward for those that lock their HBD so early. With this appreciation rate, we can expect a higher amount of HBD flooding into these HBD savings accounts. Over time, it would be normal to adjust this rate to lower levels and reward users accordingly without suffocating the HBD pool. Perhaps in the future, there will be a dynamic solution that automates this rate.

Goal HBD	Current	Percentage
~~100 HBD~~	293.601 HBD	100.00%
~~250 HBD~~	293.601 HBD	100.00%
500 HBD	293.601 HBD	58.72%
1,000 HBD	293.601 HBD	29.36%
2,500 HBD	293.601 HBD	11.74%
5,000 HBD	293.601 HBD	5.80%
10,000 HBD	293.601 HBD	2.93%
25,000 HBD	293.601 HBD	1.17%
50,000 HBD	293.601 HBD	0.58%

Thanks for reading!

It has been a flourishing month, with a lot of fun! Last month, I spend most of my time playing games, now in June, I'm getting slowly back into my usual work mode which gives me so much more energy. To be continued!

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Celebrating my birthday | Monthly Report | June 2022 #4