Thursday, February 11, 2016

Ingress and Other Updates

Yes, this Ingress thing has got me hooked. I've made it Level 6 and I earned my first silver medal.

Laura has also played, she's almost to L3.  We spent a good day Saturday running around showing Laura the game.  We made a big field that crossed over Lake Wyliey, and it stayed up until this evening when CenNova killed it by taking over "Charlotte Post Office" on Westinghouse Blvd.

Getting back to Saturday, Laura and I were still on the West side of Lake Wyliey when I started to get alerts that a Level 15 agent named illiane was attacking the Charlotte Premium Outlets (CPO) on exit 4 of I-485. There are eight portals there, all were green until she attacked. But she only flipped two of the portals to the enemy side. It took Laura and I about 20 minutes to get there.

As I tried to repair the damage by flipping one of the two portals back, bam, bam, bam, illiane started flipping the other portals!  So Laura and I tried to intercept her to see if we could have a friendly chat.  My aim was to show Laura that this game is largely social.

Well illiane was not to be found, so we moved to the last portal I had green, and sat on it for about ten minutes. She didn't show up. I was in groupme with SkyBlast trying to get a description of her. He said "She's a nice lady despite her smurfieness." "Long hair, Asian, about 30, but hard to tell because well, Asian."

So I then figured out that she was playing cat and mouse with me. She was likely in one of the nearby stores trying to get eyeballs on me. So Laura and I tried to see if we could find her, and I assumed she'd have to come out to sit on the portal to kill the shielding I had placed.  

Well I was wrong, with her Level 8 gear, she could kill it without getting so close.  So we didn't see her, and she left.  Only then did she respond to my invitation to got to the pretzel place at the mall. She said she just then read it, but I tend to doubt her statement based on the timing of events.

My point is however, the this game gets interesting and it allows you to get clever like illane was.  There are cross faction social events, and I bet I will finally meet her then.

Here we see the fielding I did today.  My intention was to make all the orange links. However, I would still need help in finishing off the CPO. The field crossing Lake Wyliey was the one Laura and I did Saturday. But when CenNova flipped the post office, it took down 4 of the Control Fields (CF's) we had created.  Again, his shielding is a bit too much for me to take without using a lot of L6 weapons and I'm getting low. 

I think at this point I need to work on farming and leveling up to 8 before making "big" fields like this again. 

So who's my nemisis ? At this point it's a toss up between illane and CenNova, but I think CenNova is slightly in the lead.  I keep a sense of humor, and when he does damage to my set ups, I frequently send out the chat "Curse you, Red Baron!" in the "All channel". 

Stephen is also playing quite a bit and has made contact with agents in Groton CT, which should get him out more. He's made it to Level 3.  I just got Kate to open her account. It remains to be seen how much she'll like it, though she did mention it to her boyfriend, and he wants to try it. Kate wanted to wait until she could send him an official invite.

Also, I mentioned to my nurse at the Levine Cancer Institute that this game is getting me to move a lot more, which is urged by the office for the cancer patients. It's too easy to want to rest and avoid activity.  Ironically, that only increases muscle pain problems - you must force yourself to move more than you want to.

So I figured she should try it and if she liked it, to recruit more cancer patients as part of their therapy.  All for the Enlightened side!

If you're interested in playing I'd be happy if you could provide me with your e-mail address so that I can get points for recruiting you in directly.  You can of course find it an download yourself - but I would love to have the Action Points (AP)


Oh, and since I am on the Enlightened side, I figure I should change the colors of my blog to be more green.

Other than Ingress

I met with Dr. Burgess, (my oncologist) this morning before my last of the taxotere infusions.  The MRI recently done shows very good improvement of shrinking the tumors, and it did not reveal a compression fracture of the spine.  Dr. Burgess was concerned because that sort of trouble is in my potential future, and he wasn't sure if I had already succumbed to one. Well I haven't. 

We also discussed a potential new drug to suppress my testosterone levels as my PSA levels are not decreasing as quickly as he'd like.  One danger of the new drug is that I could get permanent pains in my jaw.  So I first have to see a dentist to clear me for use of the new drug.  I will name it later, but the info packet is down stairs. 

Also I asked directly what my final months may be like, just so that I might give good warning to my family if they wanted to get those 'last looks' be for I go.  Basically, he said that I will begin to get into some sever pain modes, and some heavy narcotics would be prescribed at that point.  Typically the patient would just one day not wake up from the narcotics.  It's a way off, and in that time, new treatments will likely be available. 

For example, when Kimberly first heard about the cancer last September, she was trying to organize emergency leave through the Red Cross.  Well I knew I wasn't THAT close to dying, and it wasn't important for her to get emergency leave approved.  My aim today was to have a better idea of when it would be appropriate to use such emergency leave in the future. 

I have a meeting with the urologist tomorrow, and he's wanting to put a catheter into my right kidney that will come out of my back.  As far as I know this would only last a couple of weeks and be removed.  Also, Dr. Burgess says I can not have that invasive surgery for at least another four weeks as we wait for the taxotere to leave my systems.

I'm feeling ok right at the moment, but my past experience tells me that the taxotere won't really hit till Friday, and then I'll be in bed until Monday morning. I think I will make the effort to get out to hack at least one portal each day just so I can keep my streak going - there are points for that, and I don't want to reset my number.  It would just be a quick drive some 500 meters up the street, and then I can turn around and go home.

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