Egress from Ingress

So for the past few months I've been playing a game called Ingress. In a lot of ways, this game is inspired. It uses GPS to overlay the game on top of the real world. The objectives in the game are real locations that have been marked as "portals" that you can view and interact with using a phone app.

The idea has a lot of promise. I initially found it compelling because the link between the gameplay and the real world makes it very immersive. And it basically gamifies hiking and geocaching (which is perfect for me).

However, there is one critical flaw. It is an MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online). I have never been a fan of MMOs because I am not a fan of the type of people who play MMOs or a fan of how they play. Players are divided in two factions which compete for area control. The game has become infested with trolls who have completely given up on winning the game. (And not to be biased, but in our area primarily the other team. Our team outscores them 5-to-1 on a regular basis.) They just run around and stomp on other players who are trying to actually play.

It wouldn't be so bad except the gameplay seems specifically designed to encourage such behavior. It is 100 times easier to destroy something than it is to build it. There is no other explanation for how unbalanced this game is except that it is by design. They want you to build it and then have it destroyed so you have to build it again so it can be destroyed again. I guess that is supposed to be "engaging". But to anyone who does not want to be staring at their phone 23 hours a day, it just ends up turning into pure frustration. The people who invest time and effort into playing get rewarded least. The people who just go around smashing stuff without expending much time or effort get a quick reward.

And the sad part is that it could be a great game. If you were playing against a computer opponent, it would be way better. Even as an MMO, with everyone trying to take down some invading faction. Then there would be no incentive for such dickishness. If you insist on it being competitive, fine. Just make it a little harder to tear things down. Make them work for it. Most of them will then just give up because they are too lazy.

And maybe I just answered my own question. Maybe it is specifically designed to be easy so that they can keep all these lazy players in their system and boost their numbers. How sad but probably true.

And then there were three

What better Christmas present than an addition to the family?

A third grandchild and a cutie, if I do say so myself. Can't wait to meet this new part of an already wonderful family. 

Rorschach's Journal

From our local Halloween party (I went as Rorschach from Watchmen) for our 10 minute poem:

"October 25th, 2014. 

I have fallen into the basest of cesspools known as Dark Souls. Surrounded by the foul stench of decay and depravity, these demons rob me of my humanity until my soul has become hollow. Though it seems futile, I struggle to break these chains and and rise up against the dark creatures that torment me. I will beat them back. I will prevail. I will return from the dead, if I do so with my final breath."

Long ago and far away

One of the reasons for this blog is to take a look back at some of my past trips. My first big one was to the U.K. in the summer of '96. Deb was going to study the British healthcare system as part of her masters in public health. I was just tagging along for the ride.

We visited so many places and did so many things. There's no way I can recount them all here. But we spent most of our time in London.

London is a special place. I've traveled a lot but I don't think there's anything quite like it in the world. The tube, the museums, the history, the theaters, the constant activity of it all. A high bar to start your traveling career.

Perhaps my favorite place on the trip was York. It's a pretty typical rural British city, but with a bit of big city feel to it. Very different from London. It's a roman walled city. I walked the wall all the way around the city (not as far as you might think).

My favorite part of York was the "Ghost Walk". Basically, a bunch of starving actors taking us from site to site in the city, telling ghost stories and trying to scare us with men in sheets and rattling chains and the whole deal. Lots of fun.

In Scotland, the main attraction was Edinburgh castle. Quite an impressive sight.

With the recent vote in Scotland, it reminds you how different England and Scotland are culturally, but yet also alike in many ways. (Much like different parts of the US, I guess.) It definitely had a different feel, if only the thick Scot accents. There the fish and chips come with with mushy peas (which are peas soaked overnight and then boiled until they are ... well mushy). Which is all fine and good, but (as we discovered) you might want to ask for them on the side or they might just pour them right on top of your fish. Ha!

Near the end of the trip, we were given free time and could travel anywhere we wanted. We chose Aberystwyth, Wales because ... well it was the farthest we could find from everywhere else.

It was a great choice. It's a big seaside tourist destination during the summer, but when we were there it was very quiet and peaceful. A good place to relax and enjoy ourselves. And a great way to cap off a great trip.

42

So when I was young, I fell in love with this awesome parody known as "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. Just chock full of side-splitting creativity, lampooning just about every trope in the world of science fiction. And as someone whose read and watched a lot of scifi, I couldn't help but laugh my ass off on just about every page. 

So what does this have to do with me? After all, this isn't a book of the month club. Well one of the most well-known bits in the book goes something like this:

A group of people decide they are going to create a computer that (in true Isaac Asimov-ian fashion) can compute the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Well to make a long story short (too late), after thousands of years the computer comes up with the answer:

42

Ofcourse that doesn't make any sense but the computer explains the problem is we don't know the question. So what's  the question? Turns out that is a little bit harder and we'll need a few more millennia to figure it out. (Please excuse my liberal paraphrasing and massaging of details.)

So getting back to the point (there was a point?), as I turn 42 what does that make me? A work in progress? Trying to figure out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?

Sounds about right. I can live with that. 

Maine

I've been hoping to take a trip to Maine for many years now but something always came up. Things finally came together this summer during my trip to New York. 

Started off by driving to Boston to see the Blue Man group. 

The show was amazing. It was surprising how small the theater was. Got a great up-close look. It was great fun!

Then it was up the coast to view some lighthouses. 

Cape Neddick was very nice even with the fog. And Cape Elizabeth was good too inspite of the coastal traffic. 

The campgrounds at Acadia were full so that meant pitching the tent at the Koa. But hey they had s'mores one night and I got to indulge family tradition by getting an ice cream sandwich. The first day there was spent exploring the park by bus, particularly Sand Beach and the coastal area.  

The second day was spent at Cadillac Mountain, Thunder Hole, and some more remote areas of the park. 

As rain clouds started to move in, I took the opportunity to give the famous Maine lobster a try. 

And capped it off with a viewing of Guardians of the Galaxy. 

An amazing, exhausting, wonderful trip. Definitely worth the wait. 

My Opinion on Their Opinion

A lot has been said about the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision. And I will add my own 2 cents here as well. But I really see this as part of a larger trend, so let me make that point first.

Whether you are liberal or conservative, politically active or indifferent, is not the point. I think we would all agree that many of the court's decisions are very frustrating. Whether I personally like the outcome or not, I find myself scratching my head going: "that makes absolutely no sense". As much as I prefer Obamacare to the alternative, the individual mandate is a penalty, not a tax. Halting the 2000 Florida recount due to violation of the Equal Protection clause, when the original counting of the ballots was just as unequal (if not more so) borders on the ridiculous.

Whenever a downright silly decision comes down, we are always told how there are complicated issues at play (precedent, competing issues, etc.). That's often true and I don't intend to make light of that. But if you need a contorted series of complex acrobatics to justify your point, then that is usually a sign that you don't have an argument. You have an opinion and are desperately trying to find any means to justify it. In fact, the decisions are called just that, legal opinions. There seems to be no real right or wrong, up or down, when it comes to them. We glorify the constitution when it suits us and ignore it when it does not (in some cases at the same time). People laugh when Bill Clinton said "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" but that's the kind of splitting hairs that SCOTUS seems to use all the time. Not to interpret the law, but bend it to their pre-conceived political views (both conservative and liberal). And that is sad.

So now to Hobby Lobby and why this decision is just plain wrong. And if you initially disagree before your knee-jerk reaction, it has nothing to do with what I believe about contraception or religion. Don't make the mistake of deciding what you feel about those and then finding a legal justification to support it.

I could make a list of several flaws in the decision, but let me just focus on the main one. The idea that Hobby Lobby is having its religious freedom violated. To understand why this is so misguided, we need to understand what Hobby Lobby is. Hobby Lobby is a corporation. Corporations are a legal construct created for one purpose. Limited Liability. Say I decide to make some money by selling hamburgers, but I realize that if I do a bad job I could loose a lot of money (perhaps everything I own). So instead, I create an artificial entity called DaleDonald's and invest *some* of my money in it. Now if the business goes down in flames, only the money I invested is at risk (or liable). The rest of my money is safe. This has been a very useful tool for society because it allows corporations to take financial risks that they otherwise would not. The whole point of incorporation is to create a separate legal entity that is independent from the owners. This is all Business 101 that you learn in high school, and yet the supreme court seems blissfully unaware of it. Making Hobby Lobby do something is not, by definition, making the owners do something. I can guarantee you that if Hobby Lobby goes belly up and owes money, the owners will be all "Who? Hobby Lobby? That's not me. I just work there." Can't have your cake and eat it too.

Unless you believe that the Hobby Lobby corporation has religious beliefs independent of the owners, there is essentially no case. And don't even get me started on the whole corporations are people bullshit. The idea that an artificial, legal construct has greater rights than real, breathing human employees ... Ugh, don't get me started.