I am usually a big gamer but after finally playing the Last of Us for the first time early in the year, I took a huge break from gaming. I definitely needed a break after playing that game, and they just announced part 2!!!

Anyways, people kept telling me to play Titanfall 2 and to give it a try. I must say when the PS4 was first announced and Titanfall was an Xbox exclusive I lost a lot of interest in the game. Many people were also saying that the game was lacking which made me hesitant for this one.

But I am glad I took a chance and bought it. Not only am back into gaming mode because of this game but I might just crack open the backlog games that I have. It is interesting timing on the release of this game as many people are aware. As someone who was looking to get back into gaming, it felt like a tough decision between the new Battlefield game, COD4 and this game.

I think if you pick up Titanfall 2 you will not be disappointed. I don’t want to spoil the campaign that much for those who haven’t played it but it is a nice mix of straight shoot em up style, crazy robot fighting and some puzzles as well.

Somewhere about halfway in the single player campaign the intensity level just cranks up. I have played shooters before so I went for the harder version for more of a challenge and boy was it awesome in harder difficulties. Well worth the reward at the end, and I hope that they get the chance to make Titanfall 3 and release it at a better time when it doesn’t need to compete with Battlefield and COD.

If you are not into campaign modes, this game has an awesome online multiplayer. Although the user base is slightly small, the game modes and games in general are fun, balanced, and pure chaos. And the chao portion is just awesome. I find myself running around, shooting, jumping, avoiding all types of dangers.

Titan fighting can be enjoyable, and when you throw into the mix some objectives, the game shines even more. I can put this game on mixtape mode and just sit back and do what I need to do. Have fun with friends, strangers and dominate.

On a scale of 1–10, I give this game a 8 in campaign and 8.5 in multiplayer and overall somewhere between those numbers haha. Just buy it and enjoy the game, you will not regret it. With all the sales that it is having as well, it is most definitely worth more than 30$ but if you get it near that it is even more bang for your buck.

If anyone has a PS4 and wants to play. Hit me up. Catch you guys on the next one.

Originally published on Blogger

I officially have been working and learning about Python for over a month now. It is crazy how fast time flies; my leave of absence feels like an eternity ago.

The funny thing about learning Python for the past month is that first week I was ready to quit. I even managed to email our teacher and tell him I couldn’t do it and that it wasn’t for me. It may have been a mixture of my person life problems and with how difficult it was to wrap my head around all of it. Whatever it was, I was glad to know that by speaking to the people that care about me I was able to take a breath and realize that failing was okay even in my time of hardship. Because of that moment I now know that Python isn’t some crazy idea that I had in my head, it is something that I can do.

Although I still have a long way to learn more about Python, I now have a base on how to proceed. I can now read on my own and understand concepts and now is just learning more and practicing more (codewars here I come). I have found a community (shoutout to https://rmotr.com/) that can help me along the way. Add that with I am surrounded by engineers at my company who can help. I can only see myself learning more and hopefully one day adding it to the list of skills I have, to my resume.

Sort of a ramble, but the internet is truly a crazy place. I don’t know if the people that originally created it had any idea of how big or how much of a unique place it would be. Or at least the impact it would have on the world. But I am thankful for it, not just for the entertainment but the fact that there are places that people gather and have lively discussions regarding almost any topic you can think of. The reason for mentioning this is that r/dailyprogrammer has already been some help in continuing to practice and help think of problems more differently.

Until next time, next post will probably be about Titanfall 2

Originally published on Blogger

What a day! It has been a chaotic couple of weeks but it feels good to have a life back on track. For those that have read my previous posts, I ran into some issues on timing regarding my work permit. Everything was done properly and the immigration found a new way on messing thousands of people’s work permits.

This included me. Luckily for me, I work at an amazing company that realized the circumstances were out of my control and I am back at work after being gone for a month. I feel blessed to work such a great place where they care about employees.

I do however feel bad for those that aren’t as fortunate as me and lost their jobs over this fiasco. I wish them all the best of luck on getting their lives back together and this type of treatment is unfair to those that do their due diligence.

It is funny to think that the day I come back from work is Halloween. A day where people get to dress up and use creativity (which I lack haha) and feel like kids again. On this day, I can’t help but feel a bit of both. While I am happy to be back and happy in general the idea that all this happiness can be taken away from me at any time is a scary idea.

I apologize for going a bit of radio silence recently. I ended up going to Oregon and signing up for a Python course.

Python is great new language that I am attempting to learn. I found this course online through Reddit and so far, it is worth every penny. I feel motivated and encouraged to learn, make mistakes and spend countless hours reading more and more. I am having a blast. Although I am not getting things as quickly as other, I feel that it is so far a great learning experience.

Pushing yourself to learn new and different things can always be hard but very rewarding. There have been times where I have thought about throwing in the towel, to the point I emailed the teach and mentioned this.

After speaking with some friends and self-reflection I realized that I shouldn’t shy away from something like this. Instead, I should embrace that this is making me learn new things about myself. And after pushing myself some more, I can finally say I know a little bit more about Python.

Maybe one day I will consider myself intermediate or advanced but until then, I will need to continue grinding and pushing myself to learn more. If anyone has any more tools or sites that help learn Python, let me know.

Originally published on Blogger

Leave of Absence, Post #4

There wasn’t much soccer over the weekend so I did not make a new post yesterday.

For today’s post, I will be writing about what exactly is going on and why exactly I am starting to do all this.

I felt that starting off with this post as Post #1 would have been too aggressive as I do not intend for my blog to be only about this one issue.

As mentioned in my introduction post. I am from Guatemala and my family came to the USA when I was one-year-old. They were fleeing the country because of the civil war. My father had been kidnapped multiples times with each one getting progressively more and more violent. My family decided to flee for this reason as Guatemala struggled to find its own identity politically speaking.

Since then I have lived in the USA, I have gone through the whole educational system here and for the most part identify as American. I say for the most part because it is hard to identify 100% as American as every struggle I have encountered I am reminded that I am not.

I have also gone through the full immigration system and sadly I am still in the system currently. I am 26 years old right now and it is absurd to think that up until this point, I am still in the system. When I was a kid, I was naïve enough to believe that none of this would influence my life but as I got older I realized the more it was a part of me and my identity.

You know that day where everyone is talking about taking drivers ed and how they will not stop at anything until they get their license. The license reflects a certain coming of age and identity. We are closer to freedom and our public records gets updated from our date of birth.

For some reason in my mind I thought I would get to experience this. I built this idea that I was like everyone else. I spoke English, did the pledge of allegiance, read Harry Potter, took AP classes, did sports, was student body president. My reality set in at the age of 15.

I was different than everyone else. I thought I could join the military to really prove how “American” I was. Turns out the military can’t take you, and if they do, taking a bullet for your country doesn’t guarantee that when you are back they will find a way to make you a citizen. So much for that idea.

Going to college I had to apply to be even considered a California resident, so I would not be considered an “international student.” Which I found absolutely hilarious because as far as I was concerned, I was hella bay and probably had better English than most kids.

Once you get into college, you can’t get financial aid regardless of how much taxes your parents and yourself have paid and even if your family makes less than 50k total.

But all of this has never once stopped me. I don’t think I have ever really complained about any of this at any point. I learned early on that complaining really gets you nowhere. There is no point in wasting time and ATP energy on problems like this.

So why am I complaining now?

I am now complaining because our system has left me and thousands of others in odd situations; where we can’t submit our applications too early in advance for risk of denial or further delays. But the turnaround from the government is taking longer than the earliest date we are able to submit our applications (DACA).

There are thousands of us who are now left in a weird situation where we have to take PTO, Leave of Absence, be fired, or rejected and start over. The biggest issue is that we have been given a chance to integrate into society like it should have always been. I am 100% sure that most of us in this situation have integrated nicely, since we have always been here. But with this delay we are now being removed from our integration into society. And this removal, no matter if it is temporary has huge ripple effects.

I hope that all these issues are resolved quickly not just for me but for everyone. It is unacceptable that this is even happening. I look forward to all those DACA recipients to be like the wolves that were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park once they get their EADs because I know I have a ton of work to catch up on thanks to all this.

Y The Last Man trade paperback #1. What a great story and captivating. This started off with a bang and continued strong through out.

If you haven't read this, there may be some spoilers, just a heads up. We get introduced to a guy named Yorick and he ends up being the main character. As I am sure many of you are aware, he ends up being the last man in the world (sort of).

It is sort of like a Mad Max Fury Road type of story telling. We get thrown into the deep end and learn as we go. Yorick is young and wants to get to his girl who is in Australia. But his development in such a short of amount of time changes very quickly.

Yorick seems to me like a typical stereotypical millennial (I'm one myself). The authors did a great job at dissecting society in such a quick amount of time. They had great ideas like if only women existed countries with mandatory military service including for women would do okay. In this case, Israel. It was an interesting and fascinating idea to realize and made the world more real.

I'd definitely recommend anyone to pick this up. I didn't want to spoil it much but it's great read and very captivating.

Beginning of Building a Site, Post #2 (10/05/2016)

Alright, since my last post I attempted to build a site. I think I did more research on what would be the easiest way than actually doing anything haha. I ended up using Weebly as that was one that many people said for a non-technical person that would be best. I have a published site now, check it out www.jgramajo4.com.

I wasn’t too sure what exactly I should put on it since I don’t really make anything (portfolio) that would require me to show off to get a job (I work in legal lol). But I still went ahead and built it so I could say I have a site since it seems that everyone here in the valley has one. It may not be fancy or the coolest but it is a start. I am sure not many guys in legal have even a simple website like mine. I will keep browsing to get more inspiration and maybe throw in some pics I take once I get my Sony A7ii.

One thing I did learn from all this was using a proxy to purchase the domain. On the ICANN look up you can see all your information if you don’t use a proxy. Luckily I got that sorted right away as I would hate to call spam calls for a cellphone number that I have had now for over 13 years.

Next thing I need to learn is how to embed a Google Photos album directly on the site. Manually loading pictures into the site seems cumbersome and there has to be a way to get a public album and share it through a website. I will spend more time researching that next time. Need to pace myself with all these projects.

Lastly, Google and Youtube are Godsend when it comes to learning on your own. How the hell did we get things done before?! I still remember the Atlas and Encyclopedia at the library but geez that is an archaic way of researching things. Luckily, we have the internet now.

The Introduction, Post #1 (10/03/2016)

They say the best way to learn something is to just start. With this post I plan to accomplish that. I have been debating the very nature of this for quite some time and realized that I was spending way more time doing that than actually starting.

Although the reason for starting is not something I would wish on anyone else(will share next Monday). I am here now, writing and doing what I am not very good at doing in person. I am starting blog!

I am starting a blog because I have been curious about this idea of sharing my thoughts and stories with the world. Although it is nerve wrecking to think that I will be sharing my thoughts with the world the chances are high enough were no one will read them so I will be safe :)

This will be a short post on introducing myself to you and maybe on what exactly I will be writing about/schedule.

My name is Juan and I currently reside in the Bay Area. I have lived in the USA since I was one-year-old and have been in the immigration system for over 25 years now! I work in the Silicon Valley and I grew up in a bubble of world called Marin County. I am probably somewhere in the middle between your typical Californian and one of 664, 607 special immigrants in a weird situation here in the USA.

My proposed schedule is that on Mondays I will be writing a more free/open style of topics and discussions. This can range from personal stories, to my upbringing and whatever really floats into my mind.

On Wednesday I will write about new projects or tasks that I have always wanted to do and actually doing them. I will write about some issues I encounter regarding this project (building a website, etc.) My hope is that we can learn together and if other people have suggestions on how to get better on said task or project I will do them.

On Fridays I will be speaking about current books, comics, TV, movies that I am reading/watching. It will be a time to share my thoughts on all mediums and I hope to have a lively discussion regarding these new stories/mediums.

And finally on Sundays I will be speaking about sports, teams that I like and sports related news. There are a ton of sports that I follow and I know there are plenty of people in the world that love to speak about sports. So this one will be fun.

I will see you all on Wednesday as I try and build a really simple website for myself and possibly. I will probably fail but at least I can start and learn where to go from there. I will report back with my progress.