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.

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.

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.

Health Update / Fun and Games

It has been a while since I have done an update to this blog, so I thought I would do a wrap up to bring everyone who stumbles across this up to speed. I'll be using Google Voice to dictate this since my typing has become worse over time due to whatever malady is affecting me.

As an update, a little over  a year ago I was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Getting that diagnosis was very troubling and I have to admit that I was in a bit of a funk for a while. However after a few months I began to accept it and decided I was going to enjoy things more and more. Fast forward to March of 2016. My neurologist decided to change his diagnosis from “ALS” to “unkown”.  My neuro has stated that my progression has been much slower than he had anticipated and right now the affected regions of my body are limited to the left side. With that information he was beginning to think that maybe it was not ALS but possibly something known as multifocal motor neuropathy.  MMN  Is an autoimmune disorder that does not have a cure, but can be treated. The treatments are insanely expensive and need to be administered in an infusion center once a month. My neurologist set up  an appointment to begin the first treatment about 6 weeks ago. Then one month after the initial treatment I went on my second one.   For anyone who has not had to endure autoimmune therapy before, it is not pleasant. The infusion meds, in my case Privigen, have a history of giving the recipient massive headaches, flu-like symptoms, nausea, and other allergic reactions. These are the common side effects. Sometimes with drugs I skip the side effects all together but with Privigen I get them all :-) Generally speaking the rest of that day I am completely useless. Not that there's much of the day left, considering infusion therapy takes about 6 hours and that does not count my drive time to and from the center in Dallas.

So, with those two treatments under my belt, I am not sure I feel any better but I certainly do not feel worse. As a matter of fact usually the day after my procedure I feel pretty good but that is a short-lived pleasantness.    Once day two hits,  I am back to my normal imperfect self.   I will get one more infusion treatment before my neurologist sees me again to make his evaluation of the therapy. The IVIG therapy I am receiving is about 70 to 80% effective in patients with autoimmune disorders. There are more effective drugs, but their side effects are extremely severe. Most of these treatments are anti-rejection type drugs and you have to take multiple other drugs to counteract the side effects of those.

So to make a long story short, I am no closer to knowing what is wrong with me than I was a year ago.

My most prominent symptoms:

* Cramping

* Muscle twitching

* Muscle atrophy in my left hand and arm

* Loss of fine motor function in my left hand

* Fatigue

Seriously, I am in bed each night by 9:30 unless I have had any caffeine later in the day. I have had to hire people to mow my grass and do other manual labor as I am just too pooped to do it. I still walk each day but I am very tired by the time I get home.

Since  I do not know the extent of my  illness, I decided to do something for myself a couple of months ago. A buddy of mine and I drove out to Roswell, New Mexico on a bit of a geek  pilgrimage. I've always wanted to  go there and my traveling companion Allen, enjoys taking road trips through New Mexico (he has family in Albuquerque) so he was a great logical choice. Long story short, we spent a lot of time Geocaching on the 4 day Excursion.  I will admit that it seemed like the bigger part of this trip was geared towards more Allen's desire to hit specific geocaches and since I don't geocache as much anymore it wasn't as important to me as it was to him but I had to admit some of the places he led me to were pretty cool. We headed out into the desert, drove up on the top of mesas, and headed out into some pretty out-of-the-way places. I have a few pictures that I will cherish because it is something one does not get to do all the time. I cannot complain about the time spent. I really enjoyed myself.

One of the things I wanted to do while I was in New Mexico was play Ingress outside of my home area but I did not get to do as much of it since Allen's agenda was different than mine. I guess I could have been a little more forceful about it but he is not an Ingress player and I was not able to convince him into getting started so it would have been a little selfish of me the to spend hours playing  Ingress since only I would have enjoyed it. With the geocaching it was something we both can enjoy.  Who knows one of these days maybe I'll go back and the trip will be all about playing  Ingress :-) HAHA.

The local Ingress scene has been pretty interesting as of late. One of the more prolific players in the area passed away while he was traveling in Japan. He was  one of the enlightened agents, so he was part of the opposing faction but none the less we mourn his passing. There was an agreement made, which I found out a bit too late,  to keep his portals alive in his memory. The only problem was that other people started taking advantage of this and started creating strong fields knowing that the resistance would not touch those portals. I got a little angry and told a few players that I have no problem keeping his memory alive but not at my expense. So I targetted in a couple of the portals people had been building on and took them down. I did however leave two unmolested in his memory. I am an Ingress  Player but I am not heartless.

With that agent no longer around as part of the opposing faction, several areas are less active than they used to be and that means my portals and fields in those areas stay up longer than they used to. Many areas are still hotly contested, especially the one across the street from my house. We have three or four resistance agents who constantly work on keeping the park as blue as possible. However there are a couple of opposing agents who come in there everyday to do their share of damage. I am not sure what they gain out of it because what few AP  they get by destroying a few fields, I easily triple by rebuilding it when I get off work.  If the park is completely blue and I do not need gear, I will use the Ingress intel map to seek out anchor portals to collect as many points as possible and disrupt the enemy. Last night two Anchor portals netted me over 40000 AP.   Not bad for a few minutes work.

A young couple who work in our building on the janitorial staff recently started playing Ingress as well. We have taken them under our wing and help them out with as much knowledge as we could impart on them.  Paul and his wife are very nice people and I enjoy talking to them when I can. They live close by and only play Ingress in a very limited area so we try to give them every benefit that we can. Paul recently reached level 8 and is no longer a Smurfling.   I used to think I was a pack rat with gear until I saw his reserves. He is a smart player and saves a lot for a rainy day.

I received a bit of a disappointment the other day as a couple of my Guardians fell to an opposing agent over the weekend.   I actually was very surprised they lasted as long as they did considering they are right by a busy road but stranger things happen. Unfortunately I do not have any other candidates for Guardians at this time. The Enlightened are pretty good at hunting them down. Hat's off to them.

A guardian badge is something everyone strives for but it is very difficult to get the Onyx level Badge. I am currently working on my Trekker Onyx badge  and it is possible that I will get it by July. if that holds true then all I need is about 10 million more AP to get to level 16. Getting  to level 16  is my short-term goal, with my long-term goal of being able to collect a platinum badge for every category.   I am already gold in most categories and platinum is just the next step but it is a big step. A few of those will be hard to get.

Many players do not concentrate enough on collecting badges, they are simply content with walking into an opposing factions area and destroying portals, which is fine if you have no strategy involved and all you like to do is disrupt things but to each his own, there is no one way to play this game. Different people have different ways of enjoying themselves and if being an anchor killer is something you enjoy, then I suggest you keep doing it. However do not complain that you're stuck in  that level 10 or 11  when you have the points for level 12 or 13 but not the badges.  As I explained to my friend Paul you have to plan ahead for your  levels. I was able to plan ahead until I got to  Level 13 or so, then I had to work hard to get the badges I needed to go  further.

I had to laugh at my friend Wayne the other day. He is convinced on of the local Enlightened Ingress families is cheating because they always seem to have so much high leveled gear. I told him that I did not care if they cheated or not and that if he wanted to get ore high level gear, all he had to do was hack more. Wayne's Ingress playing time and areas are pretty limited but to his credit he can do a lot of disrupting when he puts his mind to it. He only needs to hack and Glyph hack more portals.

Speaking of glyph hacking, a couple of months ago I finally started glyph hacking and after some practice I am getting fairly good at it. I am almost at my gold badge thanks to a plethora of level 6 and level 7 portals in the area. I have to admit it is nice getting lots of gear from each portal I hack!

Not Much Has Changed

I know, it has been a while since my last update.  I have had a lot of things going on so now that things are simmering (not at a rolling boil) I figured I can make an update.

First off, we (me, wife, newish dog) drove the Taco to the pan handle of Florida for a week of leisure. The location was more for my wife than it was for me.  I like the mountains (you can take the boy out of WV, but you cannot take the WV out of the boy) but the wife likes the salt life so once a year she goes and sometimes I go with her.  A few times over the years she has gone with friends.  Suits me fine.

The week was nice overall.  We were 3 miles from the closest anything (food, entertainment, shopping) and 20 miles from our favorite places to eat.  I was glad I took my bike because not only was I able to keep up with the company sponsored fitness challenge, but I could do some Ingress (what little there was on the island) at the same time.

The trip was a chance for me to try out two new items I purchased on Amazon.  The first and most important was a tonneau cover for the Taco.  I picked up a tri-fold cover for $200 shipped, which was $50 cheaper than I had seen it before.  This was a different brand but  the reviews were all good.  It worked well enough but there is small gap in the back near the glass that caused some water to get in under the cover but it was minimal.

The second item was a bike mount for my mobile phone.  Playing Ingress on my bike is fun but without a mount, it is dangerous.  I have already wiped out once because of this.  The new mount worked very well and holds my Moto G quite securely.  The only complaint I have is the side mount blocks the "down" volume key but that is a minor issue.

The dog did well on the trip, mostly.  She became figitity after a few hours of driving so we had to stop to let her stretch her legs.  A few times she tried to climb up in the front seat,  which was dangerous but my wife,who was not driving at the time, took care of her.  The dog finally began to enjoy the water after only 3 trips to the beach.  She is a hound and we were not sure how she would adapt.  With no place to let her out to do her business, I had to walk her every time she needed out.  It was not too bad but she got me up most every morning at 4 or 5 AM to go out.  I just took my meds, grabbed my phone, a poop bag, and a flashlight (it is dark at our end of the island) and headed out. The one good  thing about the 4 or 5 AM nature call was I could sneak up and hake the portal that was just inside a private area.  During the day, if you crossed the line a guard in a nearby guard shack came out an ran you off, politely of course.  At 4 or 5 AM, it is too dark for him to see anyone 50 feet from his well lit shack, so I did my hacking there at those hours.  I have held that portal for about 3 weeks.  I am hoping to make it 60 days.  Mostly likely I will not, but I can dream.

Almost all  the Ingress portals on the island were in the center and we were at the farthest west public  part of the island.  Any further west was  private.  The far east end of the island is a state park with a few portals but since you have to pay each time you enter the park, I just stayed  out.  Only a small number of portals are there anyway.

So I hopped on my bike each morning and rode to the center of the island, hacked, linked, upgraded, and fielded the portals then rode home, putting in about 10 miles or so each morning.  Those rides, plus the ones I did at home (planing Ingress in evening in the town where I live) allowed me to meet my fitness challenge for biking (240+ miles for the month).

The food we had on this trip (mostly lunch since it was a little less expensive) was OK but not as good as I have had in the past.  I never had the chance to eat any scallops (my fav) but I did have some baked oysters a couple of times.  As a matter of fact, I had seafood every day that week.

Ingress Update:  I am at Level 11, with 6.6 million points.  For the first time since I started playing this, I am short  both points AND badges to level up again.  I currently need two more Gold badges and it looks like unless I either field and link like a madman or I go in search of a lot of new portals, it will be months before I level up again.  This folks, is where it starts getting hard.  I have reached Silver in almost all badges (that I am not already Gold or Platinum in) but I am quite a ways off from getting those two more Gold.

Since I have been busy with work, a week long vacation, a weekend camping trip, and other things, I have not been overly active on the weekends like I normally am.  I noticed a few of the other agents in the Resistance have started working in my neck of the woods,  which I am sure is driving Hockey Family crazy.  A large part of the city is blue and it appears the Hockey Family is fighting hard for a few portals nearby.  I can see HockeyMan does a lot of work south of us, where he works but I don't see any real farms (of any high level)  there.

Our little L7/L8 Cemetery was taken down again the other day.  What I find odd about that was it was not linked/fielded up so the toads would have to waste a lot of get for little return.  I usually avoid taking down farms that don't have links/fields because of this but maybe the people who took it out were bored.  They did not link it up and they did not defend it well so I am not sure of the reason  to take it out.  I had a few L6 XMP's to spare so I unleashed those to kill some resonators (working for my badge) but left it mainly untouched.  Hopefully the people who took it out will continue to battle for it...I could use the points.

One nice thing about my vacation was it allowed me to farm a lot.  I am not sure why but when I farmed lower level (3-5) portals, I got a lot of shields and a surprisingly large number of AXA's and ADA's...enough that I have been using them to flip portals instead of wasting my supply L8 XMP's. There have been a couple I have flipped more than once, simply because I can.  I will slow down when I get low, which might take a while since I have accumulated so many.

I have been farming as much as I can and hacking any portal that I come across, even if it is low level.  Farming nothing but high level portals only gets you high level gear and believe me you will want some L4 Reso's if you run out!  I am currently holding on to several L3 and L4 reso's to help fill our portals.

The biggest surprise for me was all the MUFG containers I have gotten in the past 3 weeks.  I had (at one time)  11.  I know it is just a random chance but it sure has been interesting.  Of course I just recycled most of them...how many can I actually use?

My  ALS has not been bothering me much but my hand is getting weaker and I noticed my left leg slightly give out on me when I tried to run across the street.  That was a little scary but I did not fall.  I just stumbled a little and recovered.

Well, the hand is tired so  I need to give it a break. 

Look! A post that is not dedicated to Ingress (well, much anyway)

Work.

At the time of writing this (Sept 11, 2015) I am 50 years old (as of last month) and officially have been in the workforce for a little over 32 years.  The first 10 or so I was a blue collar worker and it agreed with me for a time.  But eventually I snagged a white collar job working for a regional cellular provider in a shirt and tie (!) environment and have been white collar ever since (with the exception of some white collar side jobs taken to make additional money).

After 32 years of working 40+ hours per week, I have really started to think what retirement might look like.  I have colleagues who are retiring (some by choice, others not so much) and seeing people I care about moving on is somewhat sad.

Now to be honest, the odds of me being able to retire are not all that great.  Regular readers/stalkers are aware I have been diagnosed with ALS (I am not going to rehash a previous post...you can look it up and educate yourself if you are unfamiliar with ALS), and barring a few exceptions, my chances of living another 12 years (age of early retirement) are pretty slim.  Statistically,  I should not expect to see my 55th birthday,  which is far below retirement age. No, I am not dwelling on the thought of dying, nor am  I seeking to garner sympathy.  I am just stating a fact.

The fact is I will collect disability far before I can retire.  Disability will not be fun as it pays ~70% of what I earn now and my retirement funds are not stellar (although I am ahead of many I personally know).  My quality of life (and that of my wife, who is 3 years my elder) will change as the money flow slows down and the expenses increase.  Thankfully we are debt free with the exception of the house.

The current work situation has made me question the timing of my taking disability.  Work is stressful (I am pulling double duty right now with job roles) with ongoing projects that constantly clutch at me.  If not for Ingress to help me blow off some steam, I might go mad.

Contract issues, employee issues, contractor issues, PO issues...the list goes on.  Most of it was caused due to a desire to cut costs but the repercussions have been greater than expected.  Since the man who was  dealing with a large part of this has taken another role within the company, not on this account,  I was asked to fill it on an interim basis.  That was supposed  to be a 30 day window but it is looking more and more like 90 days.  I turned down the role because I am formally in a global process related role and dislike the regional politics the role I am filling in for seems to be stuck in. I have been asked by at least two managers to reconsider but I am just not sure I need the added stress. My neuro certainly does not think I need to add to my plate.  He feels I should be cutting back some. While I am still very physically active biking (yes Hockey Family, that was me the other night :-) ), walking and using an elliptical  machine at work, added work stress will not help me any as I manage to live with the early  (slowly progressing) onset of ALS.

On to other subjects.  I like TV.  I like discovering new shows.  I usually take recommendations from colleagues and friends but somehow I seemed to miss "Mr. Robot" on  USA.  DAY-UMMM, that is an awesome show (well  at least  episode one was.  I hope to see more soon)!  I was bored and came across the on demand listing for it and gave it a shot.  I was not disappointed.  Christian  Slater is not all that great but the lead character is.  Interesting story line!

Well, now that Hockey Family has found my blog, I guess I will no longer be discussing Ingress strategies here.  I can tell from the past few nights that the family has changed their tactics some by seeking out high point link anchors.  Good job on making the switch.  Smart move.  I will need to adjust mine strategy as well but Wayne, the guy I geocache and sometimes Ingress with will not change his style, so he is on his own,

Wipeout!

I had a wipe out today on my bike.  I was trying to dodge some glass (at a very low speed, at that) and lost control on some gravel.  I cut my eyelid and have some severe road rash on the back of one of my ears. Other than that (and a sore wrist on my ALS affected hand...I am wearing a brace right now) I am fine.  I need to get my new tires on my bike since the old ones are so old.

And yes, I was doing some Ingress but that is not what cause the spill.  I would serve me right if it did but I was going slow and not even looking at my phone...it was in my pocket...for once :)

The Quest For R10

Saturday morning.

I had 3,718,054 AP's and the required badges for R10 in Ingress.

I needed just under 300k  and had two days to do it (my goal is to level up by Sunday each time I get near the next level).  It could be done but I was short of time on Saturday and my buddy Wayne wanted to perform some person  revenge attacks instead of focusing on points or actions that would get both of us upgraded badges.  That was okay,  I still had a few hours Sunday morning.

We drove up to a local shopping center to take out a couple of weak anchor portals (portal used to anchor several links and/or fields) worth 5k each.  Once we were done with that, we headed to Murphy to clean up on a nice link anchor field near the high school and a public park.  That took a little longer because we also completed a mission while we were there.  At this point we were at about 50k points each so we boogied over to do the revenge attack(s) Wayne wanted to carry out against his neighbor, a mid level toad. You know him as Hockey Man.  Personally I did not want to hit him but Wayne had his heart set on it so we did.

That was pretty anti-climactic (no surprise) so I ushered him over to a place in Plano that had several links completely undefended (tadpoles set them up, I think) where we dispatched them quickly.  At this point it was about time to return Wayne back home (I was driving this week) so we started to head back, stopping only  at a few weak and tempting targets on the way back.  Once I got him back home I completed 1-2 missions in Allen and then headed home.

Sunday morning.

I had 3,838,895 AP's and the required badges for R10.  I had gotten over 120k points without breaking a sweat the day before.

I got up and decided to walk our new-ish dog (15 months old but had never been trained so she is a handful.  A coon hound/beagle handful who loves to chase rabbits) at the park across the street, the same park the hockey family defends with a passion.  While walking the pooch, I hack all the portals to get a little gear and a small amount of points.  It was about halfway into my first lap I noticed one of the portals was a weakly defended anchor portal, so I used the few L4, L5, and L6 XMP's I had to bring it down.  I only had a 3- 5 of each so it took them all to bring it down.  Once down, I threw a few token L5,L6, and L7 resonators and basic shields on it (I had a ton to spare) and continued my walk.  On the next lap  I noticed I could link up a few of the friendly portals that had not been reclaimed by the Hockey Family.  This should have told me something but I did not really pay it any mind.  So I took a few minutes and created a few small fields, just for the points and went back home.

My wife was almost ready to head out to church and I had a small list of chores I need to complete before I did anything else. So once I washed, dried and put away the dishes, cleaned and portioned off the fruit,  and had my breakfast, I was free to play a little more.

My plan was to get to R10 before lunch, when I would be meeting my wife so  I looked at any high point targets and found several in the city so I went after them.  As I took out more and more targets, I inched closer to that magical 4,000,000 AP mark.  I was just 15k away when I went back to the shopping center Wayne and I were at the day before and started attacking portals.  It was not time at all before I hit the 4 million AP mark,so I headed back home.

On the way home I looked at the Hockey Family maintained park and saw all the portals I haphazardly worked on were now green.  I looked at the level and noticed they looked weak.  Then I looked at the defenses and they were completely non-existent!   Hockey family set up several anchor link portals worth 30-40k points completely undefended!  I could not resist the low hanging fruit so I hit just those portals with the last of my lower powered XMP's (L5 and L6...I was out of L7's) and went home.  I finished the weekend at 4.040,476 AP's.  I think I need to thank Hockey Family for all the points.

Seeing all the poorly defended portals made me think that just maybe the Hockey Family is a little low on gear. It happens when you cannot get out and farm sometimes.  Mods may be common, but you have to hack a lot of friendly's to get them.  I don't get the impression they farm much, but I could be wrong.  I guess we will see.  Maybe they will get some donations like I did a few weeks ago.

Anyhoo...later that Sunday,Wayne called me up to discuss if the Hockey Family had been cheating or not (at this point, I do not care...build all you want, I will just tear it all back down...that is all part of the game, right?) and we watched in real time as the son took out a couple of portals that had no real value.  It did not appear he was cheating at all.

After that I gave Wayne some intel on how he could make a large field with little effort so he followed my advice and was rewarded with a couple of thousand AP's for his trouble.

It was a productive weekend.  I have a big hurdle to clear (I need 1 more gold to get to R11, not to mention the 2 million additional AP's to get to that level) but getting to 10 feels good.  I just need to continue to do more of the same:  Selective link assassination.  Hack everything.  Upgrade friendly portals with better resonators and mods.  Link and field when appropriate.  Reclaim any weak/undefended portals when I can.  Recharge resonators of any friendly portal I come across.  And continue doing it.

I made it to work today 4,053,434 AP's, a gain of almost 13k AP's that I picked up hacking and linking along the route to work.

Six Million Points?  I got this.

Me, The Farmer

A big (and somewhat boring) part of Ingress is farming.  Farming is when you seek out higher level groups of portals, usually close together (hence the term "farm"), and hack them for gear.  The idea is that if you and several other put a little in, you will get a lot out, just like on a farm.  8 people each donate an L8 resonator, half of them donate mods (shields, force amps, turrets, multihacks, etc) and you can each hit it 4 times in 4 hours, essentially getting a lot more than you put in to it.  If the farm stays up more than one day, you can hack it going to and coming from work.  Nice, easy painless way to collect gear.

If you hack enemy portals, you get less gear (usually) and take some damage but on the plus side you get 100 AP.

If you farm friendly portals, you get more (again, usually) and better gear, but you do not take any damage and you do not get any points  for the hack.  It is sort of like going to your neighbor and saying, "can I have a cup of sugar"

Most local factions have a farm or two (L7 or L8) they farm on a regular basis to keep them stocked with the higher level gear needed to remain active in the game.  Since it takes many L7-L8 players to make a good farm, there is usually a sense of "ownership" to that farm and normally the rival faction will tend to leave the farm alone unless there are a lot of people who maintain it, then it becomes a bit of a challenge to see if the rival faction can take it down  before the host faction can keep it up.  Part of the game and most of us accept that.  It can be fun.

In smaller areas/communities with few maintainers, the farms usually are left alone unless the farm becomes huge and begins to tip the balance of power.  Up  where I live, there are a couple of hotly contested areas so they never really stay in control of one faction very long so calling them "farms" is not really accurate.

Now sometimes, a group (8+ people) of high level players from the same faction will come in and set up a farm (with heat sinks and multihacks), with the sole intent of farming it for several hours or days to build up gear and then move on.  If you can be part of one of those organized gatherings, get in  quickly to claim your share.

In my neck of the woods we have a small cemetery with 7 portals in it, 6 of which can be "drive by" hacked (hacked from the comfort of your automobile/cycle).  The cemetery has been an occasional L6-L7-L8 farm for the Resistance, lasting a few weeks before someone comes in and knocks it down. A couple of times in the past it has been done by an L15 looking for a nice point haul with a few L8 XMP's...while disappointing to those few who maintain it (3 or 4 L8-L9 agents and every once in a while a few L9-L10 will help) We understand...the agent is trying to level up and this is mostly low hanging fruit (unless we can get enough AXA shields at one time to defend it).

However on a couple of occasions it has been taken down purely as some sort of revenge towards one or two of the maintainers.  To me that is just silly.  If I took the time to seek out every L7-L8 farm that was maintained by someone who attacked one of my portals, I would not have any time to farm!  Besides, I just link hunt.  Taking out an entire L7-L8 farm is wasteful no matter which faction you belong to.

Taking out L8 farms, especially smaller ones seems wasteful.  I purposely left one alone in Plano (75/Park area) and had hoped to farm it but some group on the Resistance decimated it.  Maybe they thought it was getting too big?  Not sure.  Anyhoo, a few hours later the toads had it back up so I am happy for them.  Each side needs at least one local high level farm.  Of course it did not last long as some other Resistance member took it out again.  The next day it still was not back up so Waynea1, PapawTexas, and I filled it out, sans any L8 reso's (I was out...grrr) and linked it a bit for points, then left.  The toads will have it back up and hopefully it will stay a while.

So, am I wrong?  Should the small farms be left alone if they are not a real threat to the rival faction?