I would like to start with “Long live AMG“. The best music related site in the net 🙂 If it wasn’t for it, and for its amazing authors, I wouldn’t have known for at least one album in my top 3 list, and for probably 5-6 that are now in my top 10 list.

With that said, let’s start with the album that really, really disappointed me in 2022 released music – Megadeth and their “The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead”. Probably it was because their previous album, “Dystopia” was tremendous, I had some expectations for Megadeth’s 2022 release. I was to be disappointed. 2022 album is complete bore of Megadeth’s attempt to create “something cool”. Being Megadeth fan for many years, I really hope the next one will bring them to the right path.

There, I took it off my chest, so let’s move to something more interesting – the top 3 albums that I enjoyed throughout 2022.

Number 3 on my list is Allegaeon – DAMNUM. At first, I didn’t pay much attention to this album. Took it for granted so to speak. But I am a sucker for well played brutal music with the occasional melody, and the more I listed to this one, the more I realized it hits hard. So there, a good, one hour listen

Number 2 is a band I never heard about just couple of months ago. Now that I know about them, I went and listened all of their prior albums. Not really impressed. Actually, less than impressed. However, Disillusion and their “Ayam” is nothing short of brilliant. The sound, the vibe, the music. All comes together and it just leaves you wanting more of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icp-CSVhrKc

And there, we reach my album number 1 for 2022, and it is Aeternam – Heir of the Rising Sun. Aeternam is a band I stumbled upon by accident quite few years back, and have loved their brand of Death Metal with middle eastern motives. But their previous albums, albeit all of them good, didn’t have the “thing” that elevates an album above the usual, good sounding, headbanging type of album. Not with with the “Heir of the Rising Sun”. It is THE THING. For a change to most of the albums that I like, I loved this one at first listen. And I still do, after 100+ listens.

2022 was all-in-all, good year for the music I lite to listen to. Found many new bands to listen to. Bands I like released I albums I liked. Long may it continue now, in 2023

And for wrapping it up – I loved that I managed to go to Grasspop 2022 and bang the old head 🙂 I even took the kids with me, a win!! After so many years marveling to their music, watching Mercyful Fate live for the first time was an experience that I really cherish. And the cherry on the top was, that these guys sounded great live, and King Diamond had his voice cleaner and stronger than 10+ years ago when I watched him in Sofia. Let’s see how Grasspop 2023 will improve on the experience 🙂

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As modern day asks for, one has to have big aspirations. “Audacious” goals. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results for normal people. Or “I really wanna do it, but I am too lazy to try”). So I do too.

I set them in the beginning of the year, and then as I am a normal person, I almost fully forget about them. By March all is forgotten 🙂

And here is 2023, and let me review the OKRs I set in 2022. I have them separated in 4 categories/objectives, and I have 5 Key Results for each objective. So let’s see how I did:

1. Fitness – “mens sana in corpore sano” so to speak 🙂 Generally positive results here, above average…
   • Run no less than 1200 km in 2022 – that one is easy to quantify. I ran 1125km i.e. 93% of my goal. All in all, not bad.
   • Finish at least one full marathon in 2022 – I did. For whatever reason a failed in reaching a good result, but hey, I finished Berlin 2022 and I like Berlin as a city even more now 🙂
   • Swim 2km crawl by end of 2022 – failed miserably. Didn’t even reach a pool to try for it.
   • Reach 50 VO2max on running and sustaining it for at least a month (or increase it), by end of 2022 – only 46 at the end of 2022. Considering I started at 42, it is not a bad result, but far, far away from the goal
   • Reach 53 VO2max on cycling and sustaining it for at least a month (or increase it), by end of 2022 – wrapped up 2022 at 51. Now that was surprising 🙂 Well done me.
2. Knowledge – increase it, improve it, use it – terrible, terrible results. nothing done. Shame on me 🙁
   • Learn basic API Gateway usage by end of 2022
   • Develop at least 5 automation scripts utilizing ST API by end of 2022
   • Develop at least 5 automation scripts in Python by end of 2022
   • Prepare at least 3 presos for the team on various learning subjects (company, world, economics, etc.) by end of 2022
   • Attend one Python course by end of 2022
3. Culture – what life it is without arts. Oh, wow. I did relatively well here. Didn’t expect it when I set these goals back in 2022 🙂
   • Read/Listen at least 25 books by end of 2022 – finished the year with 33 read. Quite unexpected I should say
   • Finish StarCraft II by end of 2022 – naah, never had time to play
   • Attend at least 2 Operas by end of 2022 – no operas in 2022.
   • Attend at least 3 theaters by end of 2022 – 6 or 7. That was productive year for watching theaters 🙂
   • Win against Civilization on higher difficulty level than Prince by end of 2022 – naah, stayed at Prince for all year. Still beating it though
4. Family – yeah, kind of the whole purpose of it all, isn’t it 🙂
   • Establish mountains walk habit with Ani by end of 2022 (one walk per week) – kind of worked. I will pat myself on the back 🙂
   • Help with the apartment activities – nothing done, and probably for the better 😀
   • Help Kaloyan in acquiring deeper knowledge in Python/IT by end of 2022 – hey, pushing him to start learning C++. This counts for something 🙂
   • Help Tervel in acquiring deeper knowledge in Python/IT by end of 2022 – that would be a goal for 2023 🙂
   • Help Tervel/Kaloyan with their fitness (50 pushups, 200 squats, 3 min in plank) – these will be a stretch for them but they are near. both are in good physical shape. a lot better than in 2021. So I will count it as win 🙂 🙂

If I we assume all of those having same weight, it seems I’ve reached my OKRs for 2022 at 49%. Nothing earthshattering but being no slouch either. All in all, I should have done better on few of all these (completely failing at the “knowledge” category is no good at all. For shame, for shaaaame), yet it is kind of understandable, now that I look back at the year and how it went.

Moving on to 2023, and time to write the post with the OKRs for it. Eventually…

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