Long Term Review: Peak Design Everyday Sling 5L camera bag

I watched quite a few YouTube reviews on this bag before I decided to buy it. All those reviews were aglow with adoration for all of the interesting design elements of this bag but after using it for about 6 months I realized that none of these reviewers had ever really lived with this bag in the real world.

To sum it up, I have a few gripes about this bag. The first is that the front pocket is really too small to be useful for very much. The second is that the straps tend to work themselves loose which can lead to the bag unceremoniously dropping to the ground. My final grip is that it will not fit a full frame DSLR comfortably (or at all, depending on the camera). However this is not really a legitimate gripe as they market this bag primarily toward mirrorless and compact DSLR users.

But there are still many things that I do love about this bag and I’m still using it as my main camera bag for travel and day to day use.

Vlog #2: 5 new observations on the keto diet

It has now been about 3 weeks since I have achieved ketosis. I’ve been feeling much better lately and my body has adjusted to the diet. A lot of people say that the keto diet gives them all this extra energy and improved mental focus — I don’t know about all of that, but for me I can say that I’m feeling pretty good these days. So here are 5 new observations that I’ve made on the keto diet.

3 observations after 10 days on the keto diet (My first ever vlog!)

I’ve never been one to get into fad diets or fads in general, but let’s just say that last weekend I was trying to get into one of my suits to get ready for a wedding and I couldn’t fit into any of my suit pants anymore. I’ve noticed for a while that these pants were getting a little tighter and tighter over the last year but finally I just couldn’t fit into them anymore.

So the very next day, that Sunday I decided I would start the keto diet. My wife had already been doing it for four months and it’s been working well for her so I decided to just go for it. I need to fit back into my suit by the end of November so there is no time to waste!

I’m training for my second marathon… here’s four things I’m doing differently

Mile 10 – 2015

At the age of 37 I trained for and ran my first marathon, the 2015 Los Angeles Marathon. Although I enjoy distance running, the full marathon for me was meant to be a one time, bucket list type of activity. I just wanted to set a decent time and be happy with it for the rest of my life. My goal was to finish in under 4 hours but that year turned out to be the hottest L.A. Marathon on record. Temperatures reached into the 90’s which made things very difficult, and dozens of people went to the hospital with heat stroke. Under the conditions you could say that I was satisfied with my time of 4 hours, 34 minutes and 35 seconds. But I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with wondering for the rest of my life what I could have done if the weather was different.

Training for a full marathon is ridiculously time consuming and I really wasn’t up for doing it again right away. I was glad to get my life back and my wife was glad to get me back, too. So I decided to wait a few years and try again in 2018 when I would be the youngest in the 40 and up group. And this time I’m doing things a little bit differently. So here are four things I’m doing differently this time around:

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Five Things I Learned in 15 Months of Fatherhood, or: 15 Months of Pseudo-Wisdom

By tomorrow I will have been a father for 15 months, and a stay-at-home dad for about 10 months. So I suppose that means I have some kind of wisdom and experience to share with some new parents, expectant parents and maybe even couples who are trying to avoid parenthood. Maybe. I’m just a guy. And like most people, I really only have experience raising my own offspring which makes for a pretty small sample size… so what do I really know? But anyway, let’s get started.

1. Every baby is different
As new parents you are going to get buried under a barrage of unsolicited advice from every imaginable direction. Friends, family, strangers, and now including, well, me. Much of this conflicting advice will be useless to you because every baby is different. As different as any two adults can be from each other, that’s how different babies are from each other, too. Babies are people. People have different personalities, preferences, body types, everything.

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Part 3 – Seven Days

IMG_20160428_183157It has been seven days since Sasha was born. She is still alive and breathing, and I count that as a success. Though some challenges are different from what I expected, overall it has actually been easier than I had thought.

As the boxes and boxes of baby stuff continued to overwhelm the limited space in our condo over the past month or so before Sasha was born, it dawned on us that it wasn’t going to just be the two of us plus a tiny little baby. The reality of the situation was that we had a new roommate moving in and we needed to make space for a whole person’s worth of stuff and we were going to have to get rid of and rearrange a bunch of our own stuff to make room for the baby. Cupboards were cleared, books and DVDs given away, and the craps table (around which my friends spent hours throwing dice many years ago) was converted into a crap table (AKA diaper changing station). Continue reading

Part 2 – The First 24

Sasha and Mom

(Posted @ 2:12am) The first 24 hours. As dawn broke over the city, I nearly cried as I realized it was her first sunrise. Sleep deprivation and overwhelming emotions swirl around causing a mad mix of anxiety and elation. Insecurities and instincts, both the previously known and the unknown kick in. I have no idea what I am doing and yet some things just happen so naturally. Continue reading

Part 1 – Riding an empty bus with an empty car seat in my hands

(Posted @ 1:09 am) Sitting on the DASH bus carrying an empty baby car seat is not exactly how I imagined the rush to the hospital to go down. The plan was to wait until contractions were 4 minutes apart before I drove her to the hospital. Enter from the main entrance, or from 6th street through the ER if it was after 6:30pm. Leave the car at the door on the way up to the eighth floor. None of that happened. Continue reading

Stuff I’ve Worked On Update

Ooops… it’s been exactly another year since the last time I’ve done the stuff I’ve worked on update… or posted anything else on this website. I really need to be better about this haha. A lot more stuff has happened in the past year, including… yes… we are expecting out first child very soon!!

Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve worked on:

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