Blog Archives

Firing it Back Up (Life Update!)

Where do we start? I started this blog about 10 years ago or so and have had varying degrees of motivation. I’ve always said running my YouTube channel was my main side hobby and the blog has often taken backseats when I’m in a YouTube mood or when I was really having to work a lot for my old company.

Well, a couple of things have happened. A. I left my old job. Me, my wife and kids moved 1 state over to be closer to my dad. B. My wife was the one who landed a job when we moved, so I have the honor of being a stay at home dad for now.

Next, and this is sadly unfortunate. My PC didn’t survive the move. I’m thinking the graphic card died (though maybe it just got roughed up from the move). Either way I haven’t been able to resolve the issue yet. That is unfortunate because I wanted to take this time to get better at video editing as well as continue to further my YouTube channel. I also prefer writing on PC, but at least I can still publish my blog via my phone so not all is lost.

Well, I’ve also taken to trying to write bigger projects. I am currently writing what I hope will turn into a comic book. My wife and I will try to run independently as well as writing an all ages fantasy story for my daughter. Those are both ambitious for me, but something I’d like to do.

Some topics I hope to return to the blog are: Manga Monday, Random Anime Review Wednesdays, and Top Five Fridays. I may add TCGs back into the mix. However, leaving my old job has limited my interaction with them lately.

When the blog started, it was all about video games, mangas, and anime. I’ll try to do a post talking more about what I’ve read, watched, and played during my hiatus. I have several blog topics saved from where I wrote YouTube scripts that are easy to turn into blog posts.

I’ve also had a second kid. Something I feel like I haven’t really posted about.

Lastly, if there’s anything you want the blog to focus more on, let me know. Right now I’m into retro games (Xbox, PS2, N64, Gamecube), watching One Piece to try to get current (episode 812), and watching my Switch 2 pre order everyday to make sure it doesnt get canceled.

Lately, I haven’t really been in a writing for the blog mood. As described, I’ve already mentioned the things that currently interest me in writing. However, while I wait to see what I’m doing about my PC, the blog may become my outlet to talk about mangas and video games.

Expect blogs to return starting Monday with some sort of Manga Monday update. Some post may or may not trickle out over the next week.

I’m also trying the keto diet this summer, coupled with walking 10,000 steps a day and planning our family’s 2nd Disney World vacation. So, if you’d like to see me make posts about that, just let me know.

I think that’s everything to cover today. If you happen to read this, give me some ideas. Otherwise, expect Manga Mondays and topics about video games to start pouring out later next week.

Thank you for reading. Have a great day. Subscribe to the DaHubbz YouTube channel to see the content I was making the last few years.

A Creative Pitfall.

Hey guys! I love blogging on here. But every since I had my daughter that has gotten tougher. When we had our daughter, we went to a single income household. That didn’t make life easy for the first few months adjusting to that new lifestyle. At the same time, my job reduced its staff almost in half. We lost 3 retail employees and a warehouse employee. What did this mean for me? The guy who handled our online inventory? Suddenly, I had to pick up shifts downstairs on the retail floor. I had to cover lunch breaks. On the warehouse side of things, I was still putting on the same amount of inventory. Only now, we had one less pair of hands to pull and ship. So, a few days out of the week, I would have to go over to the warehouse to assist them. Basically, I went from 1 single focused job to being split into 3 different departments.

As Covid has shriveled up people’s disposable income, we’ve had to get creative with how we sell items and generate extra income. This meant turning to Whatnot to sell comics. I now stream 4 days a week for us on top of the other 3 departments I help out in. Trust me, I actually thrive here, and it’s not too much of a burden to juggle all these things. However, when I get home, I just want to focus on family. I still play games, watch shows, and read Mangas and Comics. The main difference now is that I don’t always feel like writing and scripting in-depth blogs about the matters. My recording setup has also become clunky at best. All this cuts into setting time aside for blogs and YouTube videos.

Lastly, I’m trying to switch from a consumer to a saver. This means I don’t want to be forking over money to keep up with the latest items to do reviews and such. A lot of my free time is going into looking into personal finances. I also realize I need a paying side hustle/side job. I fought that idea for a while because it felt counterintuitive. If I start putting all this time into a side hustle, that’s time away from my family. Which would be the antithesis of what I’m trying to accomplish. However, I’ve given so much of myself to my current job. I have more questions than answers about it’s long-term future. I want a more diverse skill set than the one I have here at work.

Long story short, I want to start blogging again- but as a hobby. I tried really hard to monetize it. To help justify it. I tried to pump out quality content while being pulled in a lot of different directions. It got to a point where the posts I was just putting out there were subpar and short. It may take me a while to find the balance of enjoying the content I’m making again without it feeling like a second job.

Here’s to hoping something productive will come out of this. If not, this will always be my little corner of the internet to vent and document my life.

Thanks for reading. Having a great day!

Life Update 8/17/2022

Life Update

I haven’t been able to post a lot lately. You may be thinking it has something to do with my newborn daughter. You’d be right, to an extent anyway.

My daughter has a weird sleep schedule. She sleeps from 3am to some time in the afternoon. Not straight, though. As she’ll wake up every so often to breastfeed. As a result. She’s often asleep when I’m home in the morning. I work 12-9pm. Factor in the 45 minute commute and the only time I see her, awake anyway, is when I get home around 10pm.

It use to be I’d get home and work on blogs or videos or whatever needed to be done. Now I get home, eat dinner and suddenly it’s 11 and I’m just now able to play with my daughter. So, naturally, that cuts into time I put into videos and blogs.

I work a pretty stress free job. I had some down time and could work on blogs at work and turn them into videos at home. Recently I got a $4 raise for added responsibility. As a result, a lot of my down time at work has gotten used up by my time in other departments.

I have videos and streams planned, I just need to get my time management back right. As priorities and necessities have evolved and changed over the last four months.

But I like to make these life update post every now and then, so here we are.

I will say, one my favorite new hobbies is investing. Now, I work a very modest pay rate. And since Jessica and I just had our daughter, we are a single income family. As a result, we don’t have tens of thousands of dollars lying around. My boss invest and he got me to start. So, I’ll leave my Robinhood referral link below. With it, you can start investing and we can both get a free stock!

https://join.robinhood.com/wesleyh-69f6fa

So, I’ve got some video game pick ups, TCG unboxings, and some top fives planned. So please stick around as I try to get back in the groove!

Thank you anyone who read or will read these post

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. The year is coming to a close. Jessica and I have a big announcement tomorrow for the blog. We will also be doing a channel update and a year in review post. But for now. Enjoy the holidays, everyone.

I Applied for My First Side Hustle!

Don’t get me wrong, I do love my job as I have alluded to in previous blogs. I get to put Pokemon cards online for my local hobby shop. Sadly, though, it just pays $10 an hour. Looking ahead to 2022, I have financial goals. I’d like to save more, make more, invest more and take two vacations. Greedy! I know!

However, I feel like my current job is only going to get me so far. Now, this new side hustle isn’t crazy money. But it is still money. It will allow me to make money when I’m off or have free time. That’s the exciting part.

Now I have applied and I’m just waiting to hear back. I’ll do an update blog whenever I figure out the verdict.

Coming Back

The last post I made was about our cat, Elizabeth’s vet visit. She is fine now. At that time, we were stressing out about keeping an eye out on her. Our AC unit broke, our hot water unit messed up and we were planning our honey moon. And to make things even worse, Crunchyroll stopped playing anime. We had watched the first 3 episodes of Tokyo Revengers and than boom… Crunchyroll stopped loading anime.

With all that said, our AC unit is fixed, our water heater is fixed, Elizabeth is fine and Crunchyroll is working again. We would like to make another comeback.

I know we were doing daily post for a while and you may think we got burned out. Well, due to our broke AC unit, we literally burned out. But, metaphors aside, we have just been sorting out things in our life. Personally, I really want to get back into the swing of blogging and keep any momentum going forward.

With that in mind, I have been making a lot of video game related videos over on my Youtube channel. Be sure to check those out as I’ve been talking about the Zelda 35th Anniversary and how to make collecting fun and affordable for example.

Anywho, thank you guys for reading and sticking with me. Again, not promising daily post, but I am going to try and get some regularity going back on the blog!

50 Followers Milestone!

So, I’ve been doing this blog thing for about 5 or so years and we just hit 50 followers. On the surface, that is about 10 followers a year. Not super impressive, but it is still something. So if you are one of those followers, thank you for following, reading and commenting/liking. I really do appreciate it.

Anyway, today is a short post. Have a great day guys. I’ll see you guys in the next post.

December 1st is Upon Us

I’m sure as most of the frequent readers can tell, my posting has slowed way down. Again this comes down to having not read or watched anything lately (though I am watching Mandalorian!). Work has a large part to do with that. Even today, I’m working 12-9. Though now that school is over, Jessica and I are rearranging the house and cleaning up in preparations for the holiday. We know were getting a new mattress and dresser so it is time to readjust. When we get home and clean a little, we are typically tired and ready for bed. God willing, we will be done in a week or so and back on the Youtube and Blog grind. I have done a few things with my free time I will post about in the coming days. They just are not Manga or Anime related. We are also bracing for maybe an even crazier 2021 and trying to make sure all preparations on that front are made. Who knows what the future holds after all!

Alright everyone. Again, I just wanted to make an update post and try to get back in the swing of posting regularly again. It is always good to do a recharge post! I’ll see you guys in the coming day!

As always thanks for reading and have a great day!

200th Post Celebration Part 2!

Okay, here is part 2 finally. There may or may not be a part 3 just depending on factors.

Part #1: 200th Post Celebration Part 1!

This took so long because I wanted to go and reread those old post and really put myself in my former shoes. I try to be open and catalogue parts of my life. So, without further ado, let us relive those glory days.

Daily Blog For February 2016- I was not kidding about it taking 4 years to do another 100 post. We followed up the roaring success of the Daily Blog Challenge of January Pokemon Theme with an utter disaster, Legend of Zelda. Now Zelda is not the reason it was a disaster. The reasons were plenty abound. For starters, I was playing Pokemon almost daily back than. So needless to say, daily post about Pokemon were so easy. Zelda, I was really relying on nostalgia. Topics were not easy to come by and memories were not really rolling out either. Secondly, school. School was brutal. I started attending a community college in my home county Spring of 2015. I moved in the Summer of 15 and began taking online classes that summer as well. I did so poorly over that next year (Summer 15, Fall 15 and Spring 16), though dates blur a little. I fell really behind and daily blogs began suffering as a result.

Secondly, I got a job as a substitute teacher. What a weird time in my life, truly. I did not work much for the 4 or so months I was eligible to work. However, I went to bed before midnight every night and woke at 6 am everyday just waiting for a teacher to call out. It rarely happened. I mean, really rare. I subbed maybe 4 times in 4 months. It was probably more than that but I do not remember more than that. Honestly, one day I woke at 6am and waited by the phone. It finally rang (though it was a text, it is more dramatic to say rang). I answered the call (text). I got dressed and was there until about 4pm. When I got off I had to go babysit at Jessica’s grandmother’s house. She worked the night shift and did not get off until midnight. I got home that night around 2am. I got up at 6am waiting for the phone to ring again. That was kind of just what I did until I gave up on getting calls. In April, I moved back to my hometown and got probably 2 calls a day, no joke, asking me to sub. I did not even have a phone at this time (Jessica broke it.). That was one reason I would miss out occasionally. Jessica was at work and before she could respond, they would have already filled the role.

Yeah, I went into a sort of depressing lull during this time. First, Dollar General did not put me in their system to transfer. Than, I got grazed over for subbing (though ultimately they would pick me up). Next there was the Gamestop employment scenario where Gamestop hired me and never worked me once. Boy did that feel like a mirage. My parents were really getting frustrated with me but it was hard finding work at this time. I helped babysit everywhere I could. I helped Jessica’s parents, her grandmother, I even would go 40 minutes back home to help babysit just to try and make money. I also got sick during this time and it took forever to get over what I had.

So, Daily Post took a big L. I also hyped up 3 big projects. Let’s look at those. The first one was a forum. The forum is still active but it is hardly alive. See for yourself, https://dahubbz.proboards.com/ You cannot blame me. I was channeling my inner middle school love for forums. I got comments from several regulars. I’m not sure if any actually followed over there. Needless to say, once blogging took a hit, so did the forum. Plus, kids today love discord. Commenters on my YouTube channel ask for discord, so maybe one day.

Which gets me to my next point, I started a Youtube channel! I kept telling myself I was going to so by gally, I did. It was wild. I was unemployed and could not find work. Jessica and I agreed a Blue Yeti was unreasonable right now. I spent one day watching videos about budget mics and finally picked the Samson Go for 30 bucks and used OBS to screen record. Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier are expensive, we were able to buy a life deal license for AVS video editing. That held us over until my brother got me a code for Vegas 14 for Christmas. Now I am onto Vegas 15. Back than though it was not great but it was enough to get us by. Watch our first video here. Here’s an example of a newer video

Up next was all the update post about Pokemon Sun and Moon. I was working with my dad when this game came out so I had some money. I bought Jessica and myself each a copy of Sun and Moon when they came out. We did not have capture cards so we recorded a make shift episode #1, laying in bed, both of us starting our new adventures. I don’t recall if we ever aired this episode.

And than, oh boy. Nintendo would unveil to the whole world The Nintendo NX! It amazes me we even had these questions (pulled directly from my blog in 2016) “What do you guys think of this new console? Will it reinvent the home console? Do you believe it is just a gimmick? Will this revitalize Nintendo or officially run them out of business.” However, the Wii U was considered the dark days but I braved it better than almost anyone and was rewarded with one of my favorite consoles ever, The Nintendo Switch.

Let’s back up and revisit the drought as I dubbed it. Daily blogs wrapped up on Feb. 20. 4 post would dribble out between than and March 14th. An update post. On March 14th I was still complaining about being sick. That sickness stuck with me and kicked my butt. Once this took me out and sub spots never existed I would sleep half the day. I also blame being unmotivated. I said I waited to the last minute and the quality was bad. This is still sort of true. Now, instead of it being almost entirely from a place of almost depression (though I will hesitate to use that word.), it comes from craving being productive in my real life. I take 6 classes and work 20-30 hours. Trust me, I am not bragging. It is more so to do with the fact I am a bad college student and balancing 6 classes during Covid is crazy hard for someone like me. I kick myself when I go to write a post, read a book, or play a game when I could be doing school. As a result, I don’t always have something to talk about.

Than I moved! April 6th I believe (maybe the 5th). That day changed my life. Things were getting bad for our mood and overall mental health. We had to move. We needed new work opportunities, no more online classes, more space, and, most importantly, a change in scenery. I already had a room picked out for an office and I was so excited for the new energy and what that would mean for the blog and channel.

Was I right or wrong about that energy? Find out in part 3. I never meant for this to be a multipart series but I have been enjoying reliving everything and reflecting. It is kind of the point of the blog now. Tomorrow I have class at 10:50 and than work until 9pm most likely. So, maybe I’ll make a post Thursday when I am off again? Really not sure.

Have a great day guys and thanks for reading!

200th Post Celebration Part 1

We hit 200 post a week or two ago. Let’s reflect on how the blog has done since its first 100 post.

Disclaimer: This is part 1 where we reflect on post 1-100. Part 2 will look at later post. It may be multiple parts just due to the nature of the beast. All Links seen in this post should lead directly to the post they are referring to. None should be spam or anything of that nature.

It did not take me long to reach 100 post. We wrote our first post on June 9th, 2015. Almost 7 short months later we hit 100 post. Some of the highlights from that era were:
Food Wars Season 1 Review. This post exploded in the first year getting a huge 37 views! It paced all non-home page post by a total of 9 grand spanking views. This review was a big deal at the time. I enjoyed a lot of post I was doing at this time, but to me this one was the game changer. I had not reviewed a whole season of an anime up to this point. This one gave me confidence moving forward.

Top Five Animes You Should Watch This Summer This was another hype post. I was just falling back in love with anime after what felt like a forever hiatus. I watched some animes that I absolutely enjoyed. Amagi Brilliant Park, Death Parade, and Parasyte (just so I do not spoil the whole list in case you want to read it for yourself!) were animes that really commanded my attention. I watched them all in such close proximity that, instead of reviewing them separately, I just lumped them all into one review. I need to rewatch some and give them proper reviews.

We did a review for every episode 1 of the summer of 15 animes. Ushio and Tora, Gate, Monster Musume, Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers and I think Charlotte was also a part of this group. God-Eater got delayed to kingdom come if I recall right and I was not ready to jump into Dragon Ball Z Super. There’s a chance I’ve gotten some things mixed up. I feel like Gangsta also came out around this time? Summer animes were hyped. Rokka was actually our most viewed post that summer with 15 views. Even with all those hyped animes, Monster Musume was the one Jessica and I actually finished. That’s kind of insane.

That show I think actually challenged me to write out of my comfort zone. I love anime and Japanese culture, but I find the idea of sexualizing half woman half mythical creatures a bit odd. Still, I initially went to college for Film and Television and minored in Film Studies. I challenged myself to dig deeper past the objectifying woman and find some actual symbolism and meaning. I think I did that. I remember being proud of that post.

We also did a raise awareness series each month to spotlight a different awarenesses. I use to work in a Dollar General and in September we started selling Breast Cancer Awareness pens. Now, I certainly believe Breast Cancer is an absolutely appalling evil that no human should ever have to suffer from. Yet, September is Prostate Cancer Awareness (to name one of the potential many awarenesses.). There was no sign of blue pens anywhere. So, I did the only thing a blogger could do. I spoke out. Here’s an excerpt from my post.

If the stores around your area are like mine, you will never see that little blue ribbon. That’s a shame. September 3rd and there’s already pink Breast Cancer Awareness ribbons and shirts set up in some stores, which is great. I discovered this last year when I was working at Dollar General and we started selling Breast Cancer Awareness pens at the counter at the start of September. I asked the manager on duty why don’t we sell Prostate Awareness month merchandise. She did not know. Again this year, I see no Prostate Awareness Month merchandise.

5 years later and I do not remember seeing any blue ribbons. It is still a shame.

Lastly, I would be absolutely remised if I did not speak on the daily challenge in January. One of the biggest reasons we hit 100 post so fast. We got at least 31 post in that month alone. We had a lot of fun with post such Top Five Type Pairings That Need To Happen, What Occupation Would I have, and Which Region Had the Best Starters. Those are all included if you click the January 2016 link. The most popular post from that stint was What Is Your Favorite Pokemon Evolution Line with I believe had 7 or 8 views.

Well, that does it for part 1. Honestly, this wasn’t meant to be a two parter. However, this is the first time I really got a chance to fall down the rabbit hole of past me so I indulged in the opportunity. I will try my hardest to have part 2 out tomorrow, but Tuesdays are always interesting.

Again thanks for reading this post. If you’ve read the old post from 2015 and 2016, maybe consider revisiting them? If you are new, perhaps go give an old classic a chance?

Anway, that is it for me. Have a great day! And be on the look out for part 2 very soon.