Witnessing History

If you read my blog you know I'm a football fan.  You also know that I am a fan of the New England Patriots.  This past weekend, the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl for the 4th time in franchise history.  It also meant that Tom Brady won his 4th Super Bowl and Bill Belichick won his 6th.  Sunday evening was one heck of a roller coaster for Pats fans everywhere.  This is clear thanks to the Advanced NFL Stats Win Probability chart below.  Things looked dire, until the VERY end.  According to experts, this was the largest shift in win probability in Super Bowl history.  Wow.

Thanks http://live.advancednflstats.com/ !

So needless to say this one definitely means something.  As a kid witnessing three relatively quick Super Bowl repeats ('01, '03, and '04) was cool but I willingly admit I didn't understand how rare or awesome it was at the time.  After 10 years of some close calls, some not-so close calls, and one helmet catch, Sunday was awesome.  I honestly don't know if I'll ever experience that again as a football fan, but you know what?  That's okay.  I have been fortunate enough to witness the greatest quarterback in the NFL, to date (This is definitely biased, haha!), play with one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, coach play together for 15 years.  Wow.

Anyways, I'm off to knock out a few more pages of The Lord of the Rings on my Kindle.  I recently finished reading two books that I can't recommend enough now:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

These two books gave me the opportunity to learn about interacting with people, remaining positive, and gain insight on how an awesome customer-first business operates.  I like to think my personality is that of a positive person, but nonetheless, these two books gave me some great food for thought!  It's worth mentioning that not only did this impact my daily life, it has helped me revise some of the ways I go about my job as a Community Manager.  I owe these book recommendations all to the awesome Buffer Community.  If you haven't checked out this awesome social media tool yet, you should!  I recently learned I've been using Buffer since 2011 and couldn't be happier.

With that I believe I'll call it a night.  The Super Bowl is on my DVR and just typing about it got me excited to watch it again so I think that's what I'll do!  Thanks for reading, commenting, or lurking!

That Time I Spoke On A Panel At PAX South

Okay, first off I'm going to admit when I write a blog post title I always struggle with what words to capitalize and what words not to capitalize.  I remember one of my teachers telling me at a young age to capitalize all of the "important" words.  Being in elementary school at the time I thought to myself, "Aren't all of the words important?"  I think this is why I'm still confused to this day on how to properly capitalize a title, haha!

Anyways...On to the actual topic of the blog post!  This past weekend I attended PAX South and it was a blast!  Seriously.  I had such a great time speaking on a panel about mobile streaming with a colleague from Twitch and then two of my Stream Team broadcasters.  It was a humbling experience sitting in front of 100(ish) people talking about a hobby I started in college for fun and now I have helped grow as a part of my job.  If you didn't get to attend and would like to check out the panel, hit up the YouTube video below.

The only other thing I wanted to talk about was how amazing it was to meet a good chunk of the Stream Team I've put together for Gameloft.  These people are truly wonderful and what they do for me each week is awesome.  I'm very fortunate that my line of work allows me the opportunity to work with gamers like this.  It's all part of the reason I wanted to work with social media/community management/customer interaction because creating relationships with people through the Internet is awesome.  You really meet great people from all walks of life.  What's not to love?

Anyways, that's enough for tonight.  I need to catch up on the latest Deflategate news and continue to worry about the Seahawks.  If the Patriots can win this Super Bowl I will be amazed as to how good New England sports have been in my youth and young adulthood.

Two in a row? Don't call it a habit. Yet.

It's 11:15 PM on Monday.  I'm waiting on my new water filter to finish filtering out the Carbon dust before I can drink some ultra clean water again.  What better time to sit down and crank out a short blog, right?  Right.

So, with this three day weekend a few things happened...

1. The Patriots are AFC Championships after trouncing the Colts.  I won't say anything like this to my friends who are Colts fans, but this is my blog so this is considered safe space.  Go Patriots.  Go Tom "GOAT" Brady.
2. I had some amazing sandwich in the city with Daniel before going on a top secret excursion.  I was in sandwich heaven and I want to go back.
3. Chris' wife, Kim, makes great meatballs and spaghetti.  I ate way too much at their house the other day while watching the games and the UFC fight.  Thanks guys, it was a great time!
4. I CRUSHED Broadchurch and it was uh-mazing.  Seriously, check it out.  The first season is on Netflix and it had a heck of a twist.

Other than that, I was looking at the various videos I've done for Gameloft and seeing how I can improve them.  It's been fun to laugh at myself, especially when I try to throw a pun or clearly can't articulate a word correctly because I'm speaking too fast.  You live and you learn though, so I really can't complain; it'll only get better from here on out.

One video I did watch that I wanted to share because I'm rather proud of it for two reasons: the first being I ate a habanero pepper and the second being, the video turned out to be pretty funny.  This is especially true if you enjoy watching people suffer.  So, without further ado, here is me eating a very spicy pepper at work.  Just a heads up, this is the unedited and unfiltered version on my personal channel!

I'm also playing the mess out of the song 'Wolves' by the band Dreamers.  Check it out!

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

So, as you can see it's been a while since I've posted.  I logged in the other day as I was updating various online profiles and claiming the domain www.ryanchanges.com and realized, "Wow, the last time I blogged was around the World Cup."

Realizing that was an issue, I wanted to take some time tonight as I relax in bed watching some League of Legends streams and let you know I'm still alive and well.  I've just been pretty busy!  Which has been great for me, to say the least.

I recently returned from a two week stint back home in Virginia.  It was great to see family and old friends (no really, they are all older than me) during the holidays.  I can honestly say that those two weeks went a long way in refreshing my mindset, which has allowed me to start off 2015 strong!

Before that, I was busy with the typical Fall/Autumn stuff; sweaters, Halloween, and eating way too much candy.  I also was able to enjoy Thanksgiving with family later on down the road.  There I ate too much food and watched a ton of football.  Are you sensing a theme here?  I like to eat.

That's really the Reader's Digest version of what's been going on since I last blogged.  Work has been going strong and San Francisco is still a great place to be!  Now let's talk about what's coming up that I'm particularly excited for...

First off, let's dive back in to football.  The New England Patriots are set to play against the Indianapolis Colts this weekend in the AFC Championship Game.  I really, really, really would like it if the Patriots won.  If you know me, you know why.  If not, well if it isn't clear yet, I'm a big fan.  Big fan.  So let's go TB#12 and crew and get that W this weekend!

Next up for me is actually PAX South!  After being able to attend PAX Prime this Fall (oh yeah, that happened!) I was interested in going back.  Luckily, this time work is sending me!  That's right, not only is Gameloft sending me, but I'll be speaking on a panel about Mobile Streaming on Twitch.  I'm pretty excited to say the least.  It is neat because to me, at least, it feels like the work I have done qualifies me as someone knowledgeable in my field and people are interested in what I have to say on this topic.  It's very humbling, nerve-wracking, and exciting all at the same time!  If you will be at PAX South, you can hit up this link to see more information on the panel.  Hope to see you there!

With all that said, I bid you all a good night!  I'm going to finish the second Hobbit movie now and probably fall asleep with my glasses on my head.  Note to self: Don't do that.  Until the next entry (which should be sooner)!