A Little R&R

On Dec 12th my friend Allen and I took a road trip into central Oklahoma to do a little geocaching.

The OK trip went well, but day-ummm it was cold.  Harsh winds and very cold below freezing temps much of the time.

We left my crib (Allen drove up from Dallas to pick me up) at 7:30 and we cherry picked geocaches along the way for Allen so he could complete some specific challenges he had committed to doing.  One of them had to do with the Delorme map grid for OK and the other was an alphabet challenge where you had to get a geocache that started with each letter of the alphabet.  It is a little harder than it sounds but he completed them both.

We ate lunch at Braum's (ther burgers are pretty good) in Muskogee, OK then headed to the USS Batfish and really enjoyed touring the sub before moving on to do more caches.

We meandered our way geocaching until we arrived in Owasso, OK (NE suburb of Tulsa) to stay at the Hampton Inn. Friday night.  

We had dinner at The Bricktown Brewery.  OMG the food was so good!  I had "Big Mike's Meatloaf" (specialty) that was to die for.  Super tasty.

I was very tired after dinner so after an Angry Orchard Green Apple Hard Cider, reading a few pages from my newest book, and some internet browsing, I hit the hay by 9:30 PM

The next morning we cleaned up early and had breakfast before hitting the road at 7:30 AM.  Allen had a LOT of things he wanted to accomplish before we arrived in OKC.

We drove up to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve to do some "earthcaching" (geocaching that does not involve finding a container, but going to specific areas and answering questions about the specific geological features there and take specific photos).  It is a very specific subset of geocaching and there are not nearly as many as traditional caches.  Harder to do and more time consuming.

We cached until noon where we had lunch at a Subway in Pawnee and after lunch, we continued caching (in a meandering route) until we got to OKC, where we did more caching until it became dark.  

We then did a "night" cache that utilizes reflectors to lead you to the target.  It started out fun, then turned aggravating as we noticed many reflectors were missing causing us to wander almost aimlessly until finally Allen spotted the final reflector showing us the physical cache.  Getting back to the car was easy as we only walked about 1/4 a  mile in a straight line into the wooded area and all we really had to do was follow the highway noise back.

It was only 6 PM but I was pretty tired after being up all day.  We checked in at a Best Western Plus and after a very quick washing of hands and face, we went to The Garage for dinner.  I had the "Sticky Finger" which has ... hold on to your hats...Peanut Butter, Bacon Bits, Sweet Jalapeño Relish, and Cheddar Cheese.It was really very, very good.  I had it with bison instead of beef.

We walked back to the hotel (it was across the parking lot) and I had a beer that Allen had brought along (St. Arnold Christmas Ale) and fell asleep within an hour.  Allen was wearing me out with the geocaching activities!  He may be 56 but he moves like a 30 year old.

We got up and took our time the next morning since we did not have much on the agenda.  The first stop was the OKC National Memorial which was very sobering.  I did not go in the museum part (it was not open yet)  but we wandered the grounds for a while.  Very sad.

After that we drove to a nearby lake to let Allen play like a monkey and climb some trees.  He was looking for some specific geocaches, some harder ones requiring some tree climbing.  We struck out on a couple that were missing but that did not seem to bother him.The ones we did get were worth it.

Again we meandered our way back towards Allen, TX, stopping at Shawnee for lunch, again at Braum's.  I had a chicken sandwich this time instead of a burger like I did last time.  It was pretty good for fast food.

After lunch we drove through Ada, OK to get a geocache that one of Allen and my friends (Briarboy) had placed and that allowed me a photo op while there.  From that point on we drove straight home, only stopping for gas and to take a leak.  We did grab a new geocache at the Texas welcome center that neither of us had gotten yet.  It was a breaker box mounted on the back of a tree with a lock but the cache page had the combo listed so it was not any problem.  The breaker box was missing a conduit plug and mice had lived in it at one time but they were no longer home :).

I made it home at approx 4:45 PM and chatted with the wife before putting my gear away and getting a bite to eat.  I was in bed by 8 PM!

Something I Do Not Quite Understand

To date, Hillary Clinton has 63.6 million popular votes, which is approximately 1.7 million more votes than Donald Trump has for the 2016 Presidential election.  With so many people voting for Clinton, why is it that only 4.5 million people have made an effort and signed the change.org petition (As of Nov 22st) to have the Electoral College cast their votes for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump?  Is it because the other ~59 million people really don't care about the outcome?

Since nobody really knows why don't we, just for fun, make some guesses:

* 4.5 million voters really are pissed enough to sign the change.org petition.
* 20 million voters just flipped a coin and do not care either way who wins.  They are screwed no matter what anyway.
* 3.25 million voters do not have access to the internet (assuming all adults without internet access voted for Clinton).
* 20 million college student voters are still in their "safe place" which probably does not have internet access (assuming all college students enrolled voted for Clinton).
* 5 million votes are fraudulent (deceased voters, illegal immigrants, multiple votes by the same person, etc).

Where are the other ~10 million voters?  Could it be that the number of people who are really upset at the presidential outcome is much less than the MSM is leading us to believe?  It has been well documented that Hillary Clinton has received more votes in this election than any other presidential candidate other than Barack Obama.  Where are all her supporters now?

My HONEST opinion is that the majority of the people who voted for Hillary Clinton, for a variety of reasons, just don't care enough to continue on with the fight.  Let's face it.  All the constant fighting is exhausting.

As a third party voter, I personally do not like either candidate.  I don't feel like Clinton is trustworthy and that Trump is a spoiled rich kid.  Had this been reversed I would still continue to write about the outcome.

It Is Getting Harder Every Day

Each morning I wake up at 5 AM, take my ALS meds (with no way of knowing if they are helping or not) and head into the master bathroom to get my shower and brush my teeth.  Like most men, my hygiene time is generally less than most women (I don't have to put on makeup, fix my hair or apply oils/lotions to keep my skin soft) but lately I see that time increasing a bit more each day.  Getting ready to leave the house is progressively getting harder each day.

I like long, hot showers but now the amount of time spent in the shower is not because I enjoy it, it is because now it just simply takes me longer to perform the action of getting clean than it did a year ago.  The scary thing is that it is only going to get worse.

For the past year and a half or so I have not had much use of my left hand for fine motor skill activities.  I have compensated by using my right hand more but now I am noticing that is is beginning to fail me at times, mostly in the morning, when it is cold, or when I am hungry.  I cannot even button my jeans in the morning anymore. Usually by 9 or 10 AM (once I have had some coffee and some food) I can but I run the risk of not being able to unbutton them while I am work.  If I wore my jeans "baggy", I could probably mitigate the problem a bit.  I normally wear a 32x32 and moving to a 34x32 does not sound all that appealing but I will do what I have to do.  I guess I need to research to see what kinds of pants are available for people in my situation.

Humbling.

Found this web site.  Looks promising.

Examples of Liberal "Tolerance"

To be fair, both sides are guilty, really.  The bashing and gloating really make social media difficult to look at the past couple of days.

Don't get me wrong...I get it.  Trump really angered a lot of women and immigrants/minorities.  He ran his campaign in such a way that even I was surprised he won. He is not a politician (which in some ways may be a good thing) and speaks whatever is on his mind (not such a good thing), has a ton of money and probably plans on buying his way if it can be done. He is a living cartoon character.  But is he actually worth all the HATE people are spewing? One would think that energy could be used more productively.

This is one example from one of my long time friend' s Facebook wall.  My friend has several other "friends" who are pretty upset at Trump winning the election.  I probably should not have even commented (Don't feed the trolls) but I was just trying to point out that Hillary won the popular vote and her supporters should at least take some solace in that.  One of my friends "friends" had some outdated info they posted regarding the election results.  I politely corrected that person.  That person then went on a tirade on how the independent voters cost Hillary the election, taking away her votes. Again, I tried to politely correct that person. That person went on to call anyone who voted for Trump a redneck.  I did not vote for Trump but somehow I get the feeling this person still wants someone to blame.  I get the feeling the people who are so upset do not understand the system.  Maybe taking a Civics class would help.

Notice that third party voters are not spitting this kind of vitriol and I can guarantee that Trump supports would not be this hate-filled if they lost.  Heck, as mad as the Conservatives were when Obama won, I don't remember this kind of backlash.

If Clinton supporters want to be angry, they should be angry at the DNC, not Trump or his supporters. The DNC decided that Bernie was not a viable candidate and pushed for Hillary, who is as polarizing as Donald Trump.  Had Bernie been the DNC's choice, I think the outcome would have been different.

One of the best reads on this comes from a guy I used to work with "Spork".

Oh, one last note.  This administration will be Republican controlled as the Republicans are in control of Congress, which should make getting legislation passed a bit easier.  Now hopefully Trump will surround himself with smart, knowledgeable people to guide him in decision making.

BTW, some Facebook "friends" (of a liberal bent) have disappeared.  So much for tolerance, love and acceptance.

Post Election Comments

The United States has elected a new president, Republican Donald Trump.  Let that sink in.  His opponent was a lifelong politician and wife to former Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Those were the primary choices the US had to lead our great nation.  Of course we had other options, Independent candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, but they really only served to take votes away from Trump and Clinton. There was no chance they would get elected but nonetheless they received votes from people who could just not tolerate the idea of voting for the Democratic or Republican candidate being offered.   I am not going to hide the fact that I chose Gary Johnson.  In my opinion he was, despite his faults, better than then Democratic or Republican choices being offered.

My father (when he was living) *hated* the fact I voted Independent.  He was a life-long Democrat and said, "a vote for an Independent was a vote thrown away".  I respected his opinion but I did not share it.

Social media has not been a pleasant place today.  SOME who voted for Trump are gloating like poor winners and SOME who voted for Clinton are vitriolic, saying how much they hate those who supported Trump, how America is doomed, etc.  I even read one post where the author condemned ("I hate them all") the third party voters because they cost her the election!  People, please do your homework.

Hillary won the popular vote, albeit not by much (at the time of this post...things could change).  The Electoral votes are what got Trump elected.  To my knowledge no Electoral vote was cast for a third party candidate, hence those voters cannot be blamed!

Many of my friends are conservative voted for Trump and while they never said anything to me about it, I am sure they were disappointed and fearful that third party voters would "steal" votes from Trump.  Maybe, just maybe, they did but again IT DOES NOT MATTER.  The electoral votes are all that matters, so Trump supporters, it is a moot point.

I also have a lot of friends who are liberals and many of them voted for Hillary.  Most of them were not happy when I voted third party.  They were certain it would take away votes  from their candidate.  RELAX, Hillary won the popular vote (at the time of this post and not by much).  The independent voters did not hurt you, in fact they may have actually helped.  If I had only Clinton and Trump to chose from, I probably would not have voted at all.

I can appreciate the passion you have for the candidate you endorsed.  However, all the hate (from both sides) only makes you look like a spoiled baby.  Conservatives lost in 2008 and 2012...they got over it.  For my liberal friends, this to shall pass.  For my conservative friends, be a good sport.  Work towards building bridges.

Rough Night

Rough night last night for me.  Even though I had a glass of tonic water before I went to bed, I fought cramps all night long.  I slept but it was fitful.  I was up 2-3 times in an 8 hour period and was woken up with cramps twice that number.  I don't feel very rested.

I am beginning to feel this condition more and more.  Heck, I did not even want to walk much last night, even though the rain had stopped.  Anyone who knows me knows I love to walk and I just did not have the desire to yesterday.

You Never Really Know Someone

Sometime in June of 2009, I received word that James "Jimbo" Childers, the older brother of my friends Lou Ellen and Jan Childers, had committed suicide. I had (and still do have) friends in local law enforcement who, while not divulging any specifics, told me that the story was beginning to look very dark and sinister and that I would probably be very shocked by what would eventually be released to the media.

While the fascination of whatever dark secrets would later be revealed intrigued me, I really did not give Jimbo's death much thought. While I knew him, I was not close to him and had only hung around with him a few times.On those few times that I was around him, he and I were drinking with his younger brother and sister, both of whom I spent a fair amount of time around.

A few weeks after the news of his death, I learned that just days before he died, Childers mailed an audio cassette tape to the Clarksburg Police Department confessing to multiple murders and arsons. The story was in the local news for a few months and eventually the FBI became involved but since Jimbo had killed himself the police were never able to substantiate his claims of committing five murders.  The have been able to link him to three of them but were never able to find the other two bodies Childers claimed to have buried on his family farm in Braxton County, WV.  Cadaver dogs were unable to locate any human remains on the 96 acre farm.  Without any new leads, the case has gone cold.  

The transcript of his confession was released about a year later in the hopes of discovering new evidence.

You never really know someone, do you?

Really Feeling Run Down Lately

I have noticed over the past two weeks or so that my energy level is pretty low.  I wake up sore and tired which is the way I go to bed, most of the time.  Most of it is my back and I have been having general back issues for years...they are just worse now.

I have been trying to walk some each day (down to a couple of miles each day now instead of the 3-5 I used to do) with half of that at lunch and the rest as soon as I get off work.  It is a slow walk, playing Ingress along the way (care to become an agent?  Send me your e-mail address and I will send you an invite.) I don't have the energy anymore to go at it like I used to.  I guess this is just the way things are going to be from now on.

I have also noticed that my right hand is starting to exhibit the same behavior as my left one did a few years ago which is now causing me problems getting dressed.  Buttons are much more difficult for me now as are laces.  I can usually still manipulate them, but it takes longer to do so.

Typing is a chore so I am now either voice dictating or using the "hunt and peck" method, which is slow and tiring.  Using voice dictation at work is not possible all the time due to the close proximity of the other cube dwellers in the office so I am hunt and pecker most of the time.

I set my sister up as the trustee to my Google data which was a lot less painful than I had thought it would be.  I had hoped to do the same with my Microsoft data but they do not allow that, so I will have to move any important data over to Google while I am still able.

I realized the other day that I still have 2.5 weeks of vacation left that I need to take before Jan 1, 2017.  I hope I can do some long weekends from here on out but I need to verify that with my manager.  My desire would be to take Friday as a vacation day but I might switch that to Monday since nothing usually goes on for me.  I will still be available if something important comes up.

I received notice yesterday that I have been summoned for Jury duty in November.  It has been a while since I have been summoned and even longer since I have served.  I am kinda hoping I am chosen.

Getting to Know the Neighbors

Working in an office brings about many challenges, especially if you happen to be a cube dweller. My biggest challenge is trying to attend conference calls (ConCalls) while those around me do the same. I am in an older building with high wall cubes so the sound is muffled a bit but you still hear everything your neighbor says unless they whisper.

My current neighbor, I will call him "Don", is loud..To be honest, with the type of work he is involved with (finance, layoffs, PO's, etc) he really needs an office but alas, our company has decided only mid and upper level management gets offices (even though we have several sitting empty right now) and the rest of us must work in cubes.  This makes things interesting when non-work phone calls take place.

Again, "Don" is loud and sits right next to me.  Without trying, I hear damn near every word of every conversation he has while he is in that cube.  I really try to tune it out but he is so loud it really is impossible.

Thanks to "Don" talking as loud as he does, I feel I know quite a bit about him and his non-work life:

His son just got married and went on a cruise, leaving a vehicle with a slow leak in one of the tires.  As expected it was flat when the happy couple returned.  I can only assume the son is not mechanically inclined because he called his dad 2-3 times to get advice.

"Don" has a pickup truck that leaks oil and the labor involved to fix it (the rear main seal is bad) will cost more than the truck is worth.  He puts a quart of oil in it every week or so.

The battery in his truck mysteriously would not hold a charge after the mechanic diagnosed the rear main seal leak.

His AT&T U-verse contract promo just expired and his new bill was $65 more per month than the promo rate.  He spent 15 minutes on the phone with AT&T trying to get it reduced with most of that time trying to figure outhow AT&T calculates taxes and fees which never are the same from month to month. I can empathize with him as I suffered through the same thing a little over a year ago.

I have also heard a couple of questionable comments being made but since I only heard one side of the conversation I won't speculate on the intent.

Mind you I have only had two short conversations with "Don", one about the battery (he did not mention the oil leak) and one regarding the problems we have been having with our network connections in this building.

I am certainly looking forward to the day I get to move back into the main building.  I am not a fan of working out of the building I am in right now.  My old space did not have noisy cube neighbors. They all went someplace quiet and private to make their personal calls.  The only thing I had to contend with was the atrium walkers who carried on conversations (sometimes very personal) while they walked their laps but at least these were disturbances were short, just as they walked by the front of  my cube.

Is It Really Mid October and If It Is, WHY is it still 90 Degrees Outside?

Autumn is my favorite time of the year.  Harvest time means cooler temperatures, fresh apples (pie, cobblers, CIDER, etc), pumpkin EVERYTHING (that can be a bad thing...really), long hikes and camping.  Well, normally it does.  Right now we are flirting with 90 degree daytime (70 degree at night) temps and it sure does not feel like harvest season to me.  Hopefully that will change in a week or two.

I wrote to my sister the other day and in doing so I guess I caught her off guard with the content. My sis and I are not super close (we text and e-mail as well as yearly visits) but our relationship is light years ahead of the one I had with our brother. It still pains me that we never were able to reconcile but I did try... however, I digress.

Sis wrote me back today, obviously a bit shaken by the tone/subject of my e-mail.  In a nutshell I asked her to be the caretaker of my Google and Microsoft accounts and to make a "final"post on my Facebook account when the time comes.  There is a lot of data out there in the cloud and I had hoped she would agree to be the administrator of that data.  Long story short, she agreed and asked that I do a couple of things for her, which I will most certainly do. We are family.

I really hate to dump more on my sis...she has a lot on her plate:  Married, children (one autistic), full time job, manages my mom's medical issues, has her own health concerns to contend with, lost one brother to cancer a few years ago and now stands to lose another brother within the next 5 or so years due to one of the most EVIL conditions a person can be diagnosed with, ALS.

I continue to have good days and bad days.  Overall my energy level is much lower than it was a year and a half ago (I ran a half marathon in the spring of 2015 and did damn well for a sick dude...just a little over 2 hours for 13.1 miles) and while  my left hand has always been severely compromised, my right hand is now beginning to give me more trouble.  I am having difficulty  with a lot of day to day tasks but so far I have found a way to perform them.

I also finding myself getting "weepy" more often now.  Sad thoughts will cause my eyes to well up (like right now) with tears and I have to really pull myself together just to appear normal.  It just ain't cool for a 51 year old man to being streaming tears at work.

Work still weighs heavy on my mind as the pending merger gets closer and closer.  If I survive the layoffs I will be part of a new company, which will mean I have unwillingly changed companies 3 times in the past 14 years due to outsourcing, spin-offs, and mergers.  It gets harder to do my day to day work if it involves much typing due to the decreased mobility of my hands.  Company disability is becoming more and more appealing but the thought of living on ~70% of what I earn now is frightening.  Things are tight now...on disability they will be almost unacceptable so I keep plugging along hoping for some  miracle of finance to appear :)

I do a lot of voice (THANK YOU GOOGLE!) typing as well as "hunt and peck" typing which is not fast but it allows me to continue working.  The down side to that is my hands are so tired by the end of the day I cannot hold  much.  I am not complaining...just stating a fact.

Welcome to "the new normal" of my life.

An Ingress Update

MCWTLG Stats 2

Now that I have reached R16 and no longer need to earn badges to level up, I have been pondering what my next course of action should be.  I had given some consideration to changing factions (joining the toads) since this can be quite a challenge (collecting 40 million AP again...ouch) and it forces you to work solo.  Few agents in your new faction will trust you since you have changed sides. 

However I have finally decided that I am going to work on badges next. I have gotten much better with Glyph Hacking lately but not as good as Bryan was when he was playing. I hope to earn my Platinum by end of October.

The guardian stat is not accurate because it only goes from your last active streak up to the point the streak ended, no matter how long ago it was and even then it is not accurate. The Onyx Guardian badge is uber hard to get around here.  Many players (both sides) use web site "scraping" scripts to find potential Guardians of their enemy and hunt them down.  I refuse to do that. I have had a couple of my previous candidates picked off at 90-100 days or so and the person who did it all but admitted they were hunting my Guardians.  People I know who have successfully earned this badge have done some pretty extreme things to do so.

All the rest of the badges/estimates look accurate however "Seer" is on hold from Niantic. Point of clarity, I did not start using Agent Stats until August 2016, two months after I started playing Ingress so the stats are a little skewed.

I also hope to get my Onyx in SpecOps (missions) eventually but with 241 more to complete I will need to travel a lot more. Sherman and Garland have several I have not done yet.  That is one place to start, as well as some of the portal farms in Dallas/Addison which have a lot as well.

I would love to have at least GOLD in every badge but some like "Recruiting" and "Mission Day".  Mission Days are MEGA events for Ingress. I don't have the time, funds, or desire to travel in order to do them.  Recruiting is harder for me since I am an introvert.  Oh well.

MCWTLG Stats 1

It appears that I will earn my Via Lux badge for exploring 300 or more new/unique (to me) portals in the 30 days of September (the contest ends tomorrow at midnight UTC).  This is part of the latest Anomaly going on world wide. I managed to get the portals I needed by driving South down the service road of the Dallas Tollway starting in McKinney, hitting portals just off the tollway and then turning around at IH-635 and doing the same thing on the way back North.  That was Sunday, Sept 25th since traffic would be lighter on the tollway service road.  

On Saturday (Sept 24th) I drove up to Anna, Melissa, Van Alstyne, Howe, Tom Bean, and Sherman on the back roads and explored 167 new/unique (new to me) portals.  I actually used less gas and explored more unique portals on Saturday than I did on Sunday.  I also managed to complete a couple of missions on Saturday but avoided them on Sunday since I had a quota of unique portals to fill.

MCWTLG Stats 3

While you don't earn badges for the stats on this graphic and therefore cannot be used to level up, they are still interesting to me none the less.  Most notably are the "Smuggler" and "Controller" stats for maintaining links and fields respectively.  This particular field was in Cumming, GA created in July 2016 shortly after I started playing Ingress in June 2016.  I did not keep any of the keys to the portals that comprised the field, but nonetheless the field and link(s) stayed up for almost a year without any help from me.  Someone (possibly my old high school friend whom I was visiting at the time) did me a solid. I did not own any of the portals that made up the field so no Guardian badge was earned from this.

The other noteworthy stat is the "Collector"  I drive around with my scanner running most the time and I try to use as much XM as I can to keep the XM tank less than full so it can collect more. "A full XM tank is a wasted XM tank".

The "Link Master" stat surprised me as well.  If I go by my longest link ever, that would mean it lasted almost a week and I am sure that the 74 km link only lasted a few hours.  Before that, the longest one was something like 30-40 km but I am sure it did not last very long either.

As you can tell from the "Country Master" stat, I don't work on large fields.  I have never made a BAF (Big Ass Field) or been part of an Op that has created one. That might change in the future but it is not a goal right now.  I have much more fun tearing down the ones the toad create...right before checkpoint, if possible.

If you were not aware,  the screen shots are from Agent Stats, an app for Android, maybe iOS as well.  It takes a screen capture of your phone and uploads it to the Agent Stats web site where OCR turns it into data to give you the charts.  It is great for helping you decide what medal to chase when you are leveling up.

Looks Like I Made it

I thought this moment would never get here. After approximately 14 months of learning the nuances of Ingress,  I was finally able to reach level 16 on the morning of September 17th, 2016. It was almost anti-climactic as I nudge my way up in AP until I crossed that 40 million AP threshold.  If you play Ingress you know that After you get to level 9 or so the requirements become more difficult to get to the next level.

I was actually doing pretty well up until Level 14 when I was having trouble getting my second Platinum badge. I had given myself a quota of AP to collect every day but thanks to health, weather, and unexpected Interruptions I fell a few weeks behind from my original target  of August. None the less after  readjusting my target date I was able to reach my goal a couple of weeks early.  One of my closer friends that I play Ingress with  who has not reached level 16 yet ask me what my next goal would be. I told him that I still had several Platinum badges I would like to obtain and a couple of Onyx badges that are within reach that should keep me busy for six months or so if I continue playing like I do now with the exception of concentrating on those criteria.

Level	AP Req	Silver	Gold	Platinum	Black
L9	2,400,000	4	1	0	0
L10	4,000,000	5	2	0	0
L11	6,000,000	6	4	0	0
L12	8,400,000	7	6	0	0
L13	12,000,000	n/a	7	1	0
L14	17,000,000	n/a	n/a	2	0
L15	24,000,000	n/a	n/a	3	0
L16	40,000,000	n/a	n/a	4	2

I am within two weeks of getting my Onyx Sojourner badge and A couple of months away from getting my Platinum  badge for Translator and Mind controller.  The rest of the Platinum badges I would not expect to get until 2017 and those are few. to be honest if my goal is to get Onix in all of these badges I could play this game for years. however I am not sure I have that kind of patience because some of those badges would be very difficult for me to obtain due to my less than social nature when It comes to playing games.

I would not have been able to get ahead of my readjusted target date if it had not been for a few of the enlightened agents in the area who  inadvertently helped me do so.  Oweep, Yraah , Pheridon, Txhockeyman, Roseswan, and Roedecker all took out weaker portals in the park nearby that were connected to stronger portals  that they left alone. by only taking out a weak portal They allowed me to go in and  liberate the portal they took down and relink it to the others, Allowing me to create multiple fields.  when they did this they allowed me to collect twice the AP they did. I am somewhat Limited in my playing area so their attack choices benefited me greatly. Maybe these agents didn't care or maybe they just were inexperienced making “rookie mistakes”.I don't know and it really is none of my business but I am sincerely thankful that they had a part in me reaching level 16 sooner than I had hoped.I am sure that in the upcoming months they will learn from  the other agents in the area on some of the nuances of the game play. I am sure I made those mistakes and many more while I was still learning. I am also not too proud to admit that I tend to learn new things each time I go out to play.

And to respond to a comment that was made to me,  I am not protective of any one area or portal. It was simply just too convenient to make points anytime those portals change hands. When my friend WayneA1  would get frustrated that the local portals were changing hands so frequently  I told him, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”. It is very easy to become attached to a specific portal or area and want to see it stay under your faction's control for as long as possible. However in Ingress that rarely happens. When the park changed hands and the portals were heavily defended I took the opportunity to earn my Trekker miles and farm the portals for higher-level gear. Farming is not all that glamorous but it is a necessary part of the game play if you want to have adequate gear to attack and defend. I'm not sure a lot of Agents understand that. I try to do my best to make the most of any opportunity I am given.

Work/Health Update

Now that the fun stuff has been reported,  I can start talking about the other two issues that take up the majority of my time:   work and my health.

Work:   

I had posted a while back that my business unit (HPE ES)was going to be spun off and merged with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).Not too long after that announcement I was told I would have to move into a different building in preparation for that merger. I was not happy about it but I decided that I would try to make the best of it. instead of having a dedicated Cube,  I was going to be what is known as a “mobile office worker”  meaning that I would carry my laptop and whatever else I need it into the office every morning and search for an empty Hotel Cube to work from during the day. This did not sound too bad initially until I investigated the hotel cubes  and realized  most of them were very substandard  to work in. If they had a monitor it was small and very few of them had keyboards. None of them had mice. None the less I put together an adequate workstation and called it my home. other people that were forced to do the same thing became my new neighbors and we became friendly, having lunch together on occasions and chatting during our breaks.

The building I was moved to is an older building and has not been updated in many years.The network connectivity is not consistent and a few times over the last 3 months I have been unable to work from the cube that I called my own. The first time that it happened it was resolved the next day And my productivity was only minimally interrupted. the next time that it happened it affected multiple people for about 2 weeks. I cubed hopped  the first few days and then work from home the next few days. during the second week one of the gentlemen who sat near me told me he found a stable area across the hallway in the other Hotel Cube area  so I followed him and set up shop there. I contacted both the Real Estate Group as well as the facilities manager to let them know of the situation. explain to them that I needed a permanent or semi-permanent or Carrier and that you Poppin and carrying around everything that I need on a daily basis was not conducive for me to get any work done. I courtesy  copied my manager on this just so he would know it would not be surprised in case anybody asked any questions. The very next day I was visited by the facilities manager who told me to find a spot that I like that he would have that Cube assigned to me. whether or not that has been done I don't know but I am they'll happily sitting in a much better Cube That has a stable network connection.  sometime soon I plan on bringing in the rest of my office equipment that I had in my permanent Cube in the other building.   that will include a 24 inch monitor, a nice clean keyboard,  and a docking station to bring it all together.

To add to all of that, my 4-5 year old work laptop Failed to be upgraded to Windows 10 and had to be manually  rolled back to Windows 7 costing me two days work. while I will admit that a fresh reinstallation of Windows 7 has made my old machine see much better,  I was surprised on how long it took to get everything installed Kama configured, and encrypted. Normally a person would get a new laptop after 3-4 years  but in this economy and considering we are in the process of a spin merger,  I cannot get a new laptop and Windows 10 seems to fail too often on this model for them to attempt it again.

Health:

I have seen quite a bit of difference in my health since this time in 2014. 2 years ago I was running 5K and half marathon races. today I am lucky if I have the energy to walk 5K after a full day at work.  I certainly do not feel 51 years old. I feel about 10-15 years older.

In early of 2015,  I was officially diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. at that time it was in the very early stages and  its effects were very limited on me. because I appeared to be progressing very slowly, my neurologist decided to attempt another treatment to see if his diagnosis was possibly incorrect. all of the other tests ruled out every possible illness with the exception of multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN).   the most common treatment for that is IVIG therapy with Privigen. The treatment for that begins with a 3 day booster (4-6 hours each day for three straight days)  that will  make even the healthiest people feel horrible. The biggest side effect it had on me was massive headaches. By the time the third day rolled around I certainly did not want to be there and the nurse to administer get my third dose said I should be proud of myself for sticking through it. She said many people do not bother and give up. I figured that if I was going to have to pay for this then I was going to stick through with it.

After the initial booster I had to come back every 30 days for a maintenance load.   With the maintenance load I would sit in an infusion chair from 4-6 hours With an IV in my arm. I had to do this every 30 days until they knew for sure whether or not the treatment was working on me. I received three or four maintenance loads  but they were not having any effect. when I went to go see my neurologist for my quarterly visit back in August he agreed with me that I did not have multifocal motor neuropathy what he was saying was a slowly progressing Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS).

Needless to say this has been tough for me to deal with. When I was first diagnosed with ALS in the back of my mind I kept thinking that eventually someone would find out that I had something else and I would be treated for it and recover.  However now the reality has set in and I am becoming more despondent each week. I am having trouble getting comfortable at night sleeping due to the pain in my left shoulder. the normal positions that I am comfortable sleeping in are not possible due to the pain add my left shoulder. I am unable to extend my left arm out Like I am signaling for a left turn. My wife tells me that I look very miserable when I am first attempting to get comfortable in bed. I guess I can get some pain meds but I really hate using them because the potential for addiction can be quite great.

I am not sure how much longer I will want to continue working. I have not saved up enough money to live off of and there is always the possibility disability but it only pays 70% and I'm not sure that my doctor will be willing to sign off on it yet. He told me once before that he would but I'm not sure if he was just telling me that or he was being sincere. I think he looks at me as being healthy enough to work so he wants me to continue. working would be excellent for my mental health but due to all these stressful changes here in the office I'm not sure it is something is conducive  to a healthy lifestyle or not.

I have vacation scheduled at the end of the month. I am not going to join my wife at the beach like she wanted me to. I'm actually quite tired of going to the beach every year and she knows it. since I'm not going with her she has decided to take an extra weight and swing by and visit a friend of hers in Georgia. that means for 2 weeks I will be on my own without any assistance around the house which is not a major problem. generally I can do most things reasonably well on my own.

During the time she is gone we will be having some work done around the house. First we have a plumber coming over to replace all of the shut-off valves in the house. next we have a contractor coming over 2 power wash and Stain our fence.   while he is there he is going to replace the turbine vents on a roof that were damaged after the last hail storm. my wife has also told me that he will be doing some touch-up work under warranty go on a couple of places on the outside of the house.

I am hoping to be able to run around with my friend Alan Mabry at least 2 or 3 days during the time she is gone. he wants to make a geocaching run into Oklahoma  And I would love to join him as we have a lot of fun on our road trips.  That road trip to Oklahoma has not been confirmed yet but if he has free time we will be going.

Ingress Update

I know it has been a while since I have made an update.   I would like to say that I've been too busy but that simply would be a lie and it's difficult to get motivated to make blog entries when your typing takes so much effort due to illness. Therefore any thing that is typed that will be more than a sentence or two will be done courtesy of Google voice to text.n  Sorry for any errors.

If you have read any of my latest entries, you are aware that I am a fan of the augmented reality game from Niantic, known as Ingress.  Ingress has been overshadowed a bit by Pokemon go but the latter is becoming  less relevant as its popularity begins to wane. Actually Pokemon Go being released helped to me out with my Ingress playing because many Die Hard Ingress players moved over to Pokemon Go at least for a little while. That gave me time to build up my AP and badges.

I was motivated to write this entry today due to an interaction I had with another resistance agent. On my way to work I was hacking, linking, and Fielding Like I normally do at this time of the day. What I am not able to complete on  my way to work I will usually be able to complete on my way home from work. This morning while I was doing some linking I received a message on the Comms Channel from an agent I was not familiar with that consisted of only two words, “please stop”.   I wasn't sure what this meant but my guess was there was an operation running that I was not familiar with and my current linking was endangering it.   I responded with my own two-word response, “stop what?” but I don't receive an answer until after I made it into the office. Once in the office I received a Google Hangouts request from the agent who had reached out to me earlier on the comms Channel. She apologized for her abruptness and told me that she was working on a massive 16 layer field that my current Linking spree  had just ruined.  I felt sorry for her but I am not a mind reader. How was I to know that she was running an op? The last time that I almost interrupted and operation the agent involved reached out and told me what he was doing and I was able to stop before any damage was done.

I guess my point is, if you are going to run an operation and spend several hours doing so, it would help to reach out to the community that plays in that area and let them know so they can accommodate you. I also don't understand why people want to attempt to make a BAF that  involves a highly contested portal.  The portal in question is a at ost office along a heavily-traveled street. Several agent fight over control of this portal every day. I hack/link this portal every morning and if I can link it back to something that I normally maintain, I do. The problem is this agent did not know that, just like I did not know her plans for the BAF. I can tell you that had I known she was working on such a massive project, I would have held off on linking any portals this morning.

I apologize to the agent but I don't think my apology was truly accepted. She sounded very hurt many hours help her time with potentially wasted. now it is possible that she could go back and take down the portal that is causing the problems but that might not be possible for her.   besides comma there is no guarantee that another enemy agent won't come through and muck things up themselves.

I have to give credit to those agents who spend so much time planning projects like this. They are better agents than I am, certainly.   Maybe it's because I'm not really social with my gaming and prefer to play alone. However I would be happy to help somebody if they needed a little bit of assistance on an operation.  I have  knocked down a link or two that was in the way of a BAF for agents in the past.

One of the reasons why I had done so much linking this morning was the fact that I am less than 100,000 AP from reaching the R16 level. This is a big moment for me and I have been working towards it for over a year. I normally give myself a quota of points to make everyday and this week I have exceeded the daily quota and I'm about two weeks ahead of schedule to max out my levels. Of course that's no excuse when you block someone's operation but then you have to know about it you're just playing the game like you normally would.

I have being able to you get to this point in my Ingress playing Thanks to a couple of enemy agents who like to knock down and occasional portal or two at the park across from my house. every time they knocked down 1 portal it gives me the chance to make anywhere from 3 to 10 fields. The amount of points I get exceeds the points they get. it is easier to build than it is to destroy and that is more gratifying as well.