Daniel J Isom

April absolutely flew by but here are the cliff notes: I turned 40, the federal government is doing every it can to fucking ruin the things I care about, and we had a nice trip back to Syracuse for Easter. You'd think turning 40 would be a much bigger deal, but if you read my post about it (link below) you'll understand why it's not. Both my work and favorite hobby are being greatly affected by the decisions of the current administration. Whole federal departments are being downsized and/or cut which means funding for the work we do is just evaporating before our very eyes. With the release of a leaked HHS budget proposal, our office specifically could see a massive change.  The board game hobby that I adore is seeing similar issues with many publishers and retailers either closing or drastically changing their business models because of the tariffs on China. The people producing/selling the games are losing their livelihoods and homes in some cases, while consumers are not...

I said in my  Turning 39  post last year that I probably wouldn't post something like it this year and I'm not going to. That post was a deep look into what was going on in my life and what had gone on since my  Turning 32  post. Both were written in a sort of stream of consciousness style where I asked a lot of questions and made a lot of statements that I may or may not have stuck to. This post is not that. This is just me recognizing that I am not in my thirties anymore. I am 40 now and I will be in my 40s until I am not. Hopefully I will be in 50s until I am not and then in my 60s until I am not and well...you get what I'm saying. The title of this post comes from a favorite animated show of mine called Aqua Teen Hunger Force . I'm not going to explain what the show is about or why the main characters are anthropomorphic fast food items. You either know it or you don't and either is fine. When I saw the clip again recently, I knew I wanted to use the qu...

  March felt really busy even though we didn't have any trips or big plans, just a lot of busy weekends and the normal weekly grinds as we head into spring. We got to see Grace and Ben perform at I Love School District Day during mini concerts in band and chorus, respectively. As the weather got better we were able to spend more time outside and yard work has already begun. I also worked towards reorganizing the garage to be able to use my exercise equipment again. It tends to get trapped by random stuff and gifts during the run up to Christmas. My 40th birthday is in just a few days, so I need to really get back into better habits. Blah Blog Log Only a single post in March, which happened to be the wrap up post for February. January 2025 Wrap-Up  - Sourdough discard crackers, a new gaming record, and a show about a nuclear meltdown. Bored  Board Games Another amazing month of gaming that saw 175 plays across 27 games with 57 of the plays being The Guild of Merchant Explo...

After the absolute slog that was the month of January, I felt like February kind of flew by. Sure the month is shorter than most, but the ending came so quickly despite not being that busy. We did have a small snow storm that dropped enough to give me a day off. The kids and I got out and played a couple of times since it was perfect packing snow for snowballs. We decided to visit the National Aquarium again in Baltimore before our yearly membership runs out. Other than that it was a lot of our usual schedule and I was thankful for some simple weekend days. Blah Blog Log There were a couple of posts early in the month and there may be more coming now that I'm inactive on Meta owned apps. January 2025 Wrap-Up  - TikTok ban, a psychological triller miniseries, and a board game I've wanted for many years. 100 Games 100 Plays  - A new long term gaming goal. Bored  Board Games I set a new personal record of number of plays in a given month with 220. While I was still doom...

  Recently I logged my 100th play of the card game Sea Salt & Paper , making it the 12th  16th (edit: previous blog post listed additional games) tabletop game that has reached the century mark. That got me wondering how many people have played even a single game 100 times. Then I thought, what if I had 100 plays of 100 games? In board games there is a stat called the H-Index, which is a measure of how many games you have played as many times as there are games in that group. For example, an H-Index of 5 means you have played 5 games at least 5 times. So I've decided to take on a long term project to try and achieve an H-Index of 100.  To give you some understanding of just how lofty this goal is, I've been actively participating in the hobby for close to twenty years and my H-Index is just under 30. It's hard to say exactly what the number is because I've only been logging games for a couple of years. Thankfully most of my online plays were saved on BGA so I hav...

2025 has started off with a bang. Things were quiet early on and then really picked up around the middle of the month. TikTok was temporarily banned, which has caused me to delete all Meta owned apps like Facebook and Instagram from my phone. I plan to stay inactive on all Meta apps until the fate of TikTok is decided. Once something is more definitive I'll make a decision on what I want to do going forward, which will include a post about my opinion the subject. That same weekend we were in NY to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday and had a wonderful time seeing so many family members all together again. The inauguration of President Trump and his subsequent executive orders set off a wave of discussions, especially at work. It's a very interesting time being a Libertarian who works for a state government but works on and is paid by federal grants. Overall, the mandates and expected changes have been a mixed bag. I'm excited to see the government become more effi...

“Simplicity brings more happiness than complexity.” The theme for 2025 is slowing down. In last year's post I mentioned that as I am nearing 40 years of life, chasing multiple goals just isn't what I'm interested in doing. To combat that, I focused on things I enjoyed and had some success in each of the three goals I set. However, this year I'm only going to have a single resolution and unlike some previous years, this single resolution will not have multiple goals within it. So in 2025, I will . . .  Read Simplify Magazine . Simplify Magazine is from the mind of Joshua Baker, the man behind Becoming Minimalist . I've read a couple of his books and continue to watch many of his YouTube videos, all of which are about...becoming minimalist. From the website, Simplify Magazine "is a quarterly, digital publication that pulls together experts in various fields to address some of the most pressing needs of the modern family."  Essentially each issue is a colle...