Still Crazy After All These Weeks.

Of course all Y'all know I haven't posted much at all this week, and I have been through some exciting stuff I suppose. To begin with on 3/2 I was very sick from pneumonia, though I didn't know it was that serious. You see, it wasn't the first time in my life I've had a fever and coughed up the green junk.

I was however concerned about the fact my hands were going numb and I was getting a lot of pain in both arms.  So I put in a call to my oncology clinic.  My doctor was going to be out of town that weekend, and the nurse wanted me to go to the ER or see a GP because I had 103.7F fever.

Well I didn't feel that was going to heal me much better than just a couple of sick days on my own - but she wouldn't let go. She called my wife a couple of hours later because she wanted a white blood cell count - it might be critically low.  So they did manage to get me in to CMC pineville, and while I was getting blood drawn by the oncologist's clinic, they sent me to the ER who decided to keep me until the following Sunday.

I worked from Monday to Thursday, and has the Nephrostomy tube installed on the 11th. since I was so weak from the double pneumonia. they kept me for a couple of days, and also released me on Sunday.  This this was very painful to deal with on the first few days. It's still a little problem but I've found some pain avoidance techniques.

First, when you Urinate even a very small amount (10 ml for example) it develops a severe pain in the kidney like the bladder is trying to suck the kidney through the ureter.  The trick is just release the urine slowly - let it take its own sweet time. It still hurts but the pain is manageable. 

So I'm still having trouble with my arms that nobody seems to know the sourece of the trouble.  I do have legions on my cervical spine by Dr, Burgess is not convinced this is the problem, and he's refered me to a specialist, i have yet to meet.

Also, my pain medication has been upped to 15mg of Morphine every 12 hours with 10 mg of Oxycodone every four for 'break through pain'.  Well I have tested it a few times, and I pretty much need my break through pain meds every four hours.

I am also sweating up a storm both day and night. My urine is dark, but that's largely because of the water loss through sweat. Laura and I are looking for many water sources, because they are getting boring - though I haven't yet turned down a Guinness. We bought a few extra sweat towels for around the house, and will likely get more before that style goes out of stock.

I do want you to know, it was painful just to lift my left arm high enough to type this. It may be a while before I post a whole lot.

Weight is dropping some, just because I recognize that I'm not expending huge calories, so why should I eat huge calories ?
264 lbs.

Laura Hits Level 5

NavyMom59 hits level 5 today. Laura and I were out for about 4 hours.  First we farmed in the Evergreen Cemetery, there were two missions that cover the same set of portals, so we accomplished them both.  We picked this area, because there were a lot of level 7 and 8 portals, and I was in need of level 7 bursters. Another nice thing was that all portals were reachable by car.  Considering the distance between the portals, this is neccesary.

So after loading up on gear, we hit a couple of long blockers made by FlatStan and CenNova. and then we headed to Lowry which at this time was 14 portals all neutral or "ghosted".  This did require some walking.  The difficult thing for me was to let Laura have all the opportunities to make links and field up the place to grab all the AP.

But I need about 230K for the next level, and Laura needed about 36K. As a team we're better if Laura could throw level 5 bursters ( B5's for short.)

And we achieved it, Laura made L5 from Lowry and we headed for home. I thought I might get out again and work Charlotte Premium Outlets, but I have had enough exercise for the day.  It's time to take the shoes off.

A Full Day of Ingress

Laura ( NavyMom59 ) and I managed to get out of the house and on the road about 10:00 once I finally decided on what we should do.  We were going to be over Fatiallians and bookwyrm1216's house at 18:00 for a camp on using IITC. Also, we planned to go visit St Ann's about 15:00.  So I thought we could complete a mission and visit Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden which required a hacking of 14 portals. 

And as you might imagine it was a great visit even in mid February.

Of course the best part was the green house where the orchids could be sheltered from typical mid-February weather.  This place is on the West side of Lake Wylie, and we're not over there very often except to buy gasoline.  (The difference in NC and SC taxes make it worth the trip)

So we completed the mission, threw up a few Control Fields for AP, and I figured we had the time to squeeze in one more mission near the Rivergate shopping area.  I expected it to be easy as I thought all the portals could be hacked from the car.  Well, all but one as it turned out, and that wasn't a bad walk.

In fact, as we walked back I was stopped by a young boy who was interested in a Naval career and was just about to join the sea cadets, in preparation for Annapolis.   So we exchanged e-mail addresses in case he wanted to hear any of my sea stories. 

So as we begin driving up I-77, I check my GroupMe and find the SkyBlast is very concerned about a multi-layer that the smurfs have put up.  I didn't know that the Check Point was at 16:00, so I figured I could take it down after we finished with St. Ann's.  

MoxieKai stepped in and was able to attack the North East corner, and since I saw him on the IITC, I figured we had time to hit the lighthouse on the North West corner, before appearing at St. Ann's.  This was nearly a "Leroy Jenkins" move. I had no idea I would be dealing with a Level 8 portal that was well shielded.

Look before you attack - very important!

I suppose I should have known better.  It was the critical anchor for their layer cake. I might have been able to take it out, but I was too lazy to get out of the car, and I wasn't directly on top of the portal for the first L7 Burster.  I was able to take out 3 resonators pretty easily, and had I been centered I think I would have succeeded. 

But one thing to know about an L8.  It takes 8 L8 or higher agents to build one, because no agent can put more than one Level 8 resonator on a portal (Jarvis / ADA excepted) and that means when you hit a portal, at least eight agents are going to get a report, and they can all recharge remotely if they have keys - and you bet that they do!

So I expended all my L7 and L6 bursters, which was about 150 each, and realized it was a lost cause. NavyMom59 also threw what she could, but as she's still L3, it wasn't much help.  We need both of us to L8 ASAP. 

We moved onto St. Ann's after announcing we had to give it up.

Then, we picked up our daughter Hylidae59 and the three of us when to the class taught by Xzre.  
FringeDynamic, AlphaWolfHybrid, and boyintub were also in attendance. It was very helpful, as I didn't quite know how to use bookmarks, and how that made drawing fields so much easier.  We also discussed various ways to throw large fields.

I think we may host the next one.

 

"Curse You, Red Baron!"

So I was out at the First Presbyterian Cemetery on Steele Creek Road, which is a nice concentration of portals that in Ingress is known as a 'farm'.  I had hoped to blow up some blue fields, but someone got to them before I did, and it wasn't as lucrative for my AP balance as I had hoped.   However there were blue portals to hit, and as I did, CenNova was getting attack reports.

He was close by and decided to drive over to catch me.  At this cemetery there are some iron gates that they close and lock at night to keep cars out.  However, you can enter on foot, and I'm told they don't mind if agents do.

So I was half way into the place and I see a white bronco sized vehicle in the distance and someone pops out a hand and waves very cheerfully.  I wondered if this was an agent, and in particular CenNova.

I was reaching the limit of my strength to walk, but I still had half the graveyard to visit.  I was also trying to complete a "mission" which required me to hack all the ports in that graveyard.  I am finding that if I'm not careful, I can "over do it" and exhaust myself while playing Ingress.  Sometimes as I walk out there I get a little wobbly on the legs. But I also believe that it is pushing me to the level of exercise that I need, I just have to be good to give myself adequate rest.  For example, I did go to bed about 21:00 last night.  Other nights I tire out enough and then I get Laura to do some driving as we hit some good drive by portals together.

So it was CenNova, that was waving, and he drove up the back way, where there are no gates and we had a fine chat.  He opened with "Hello, Snoopy!" so I knew it was him.

On my very first night of play, there was a blue portal with just a single resonator on it near my home.  I walked up to it with Matthew to demonstrate how this game worked to kindle interest.  So I attacked the portal with my Level 1 bursters and after throwing about 30 of them, I stopped.  I told Matthew, that I wasn't sure I was doing anything, but also wondered if the enemy was protecting the portal.  Well it was CenNova's portal to begin with.

The following night I was able to make a couple of control fields from the Charlotte Premium Outlet mall to some of the portals in the area, and covered the blue portal I tried to kill the night before.

The fields didn't last long before they were popped by CenNova, and that's when I broadcast chat to @CenNova "Curse you, Red Baron!", and thus started a relationship with the other side.

Anyway, the point is that you can't really see your enemies as enemies in this game - it's all just a game.

Stephen Captures the Nautilus

Some of the fun of ingress is that you can visit unique places and add them to your collection of mission patches.  

Here Stephen and a friend visit and capture the portal for the USS Nautilus.  A museum of the world's first nuclear submarine.

Congrats, Stephen, aka SAWNo1.

And Now Kimberley Has Joined the Enlightened!

I just finished a Skype conversation with Kim, and luckily she picked the right faction before I got to tell her that this is an Enlightened family.  So welcome Rosetalon to the family clan!

Kim will be going on a long deployment  Monday, and won't be back to her home port before October.  At that time, she'll begin her separation leave.  However, I suggested that she join Ingress early, as she will likely visit some ports with cool missions and ports to hack for her account.

Missions in Ingress are a lot like getting visa stamps in your passport book. e.g. proof that you've been to France, or someplace.  With Kim's Ingress account, should could collect missions from Singapore or Hong Kong and such.  

I also had a phone call with Mom today, and talked about Ingress - she wasn't as convinced it was for her. But she'll never know till she tries it.  

Colors

Ok I've been trying to get this new color scheme to work out so everything is readable again.

The goal was to have the green agent names to be readable against the background. They were too bright, and so I needed to have a darker background but not so dark that the default black text couldn't be read.  I also wanted the blue agents to be readable - and then there are the link colors!

Anyway if you feel these colors are hard on your eyes (we all perceive things differently) be sure to comment, and I'll see what I can do.

However, it seems I've lost all photo data - I guess that will have to wait till I get home to reload them, where I have most of the files on my desktop.  I hope I can find everything!

Actually, it turned out that the photos were still in the blog site's background, but all the linking info had been lost. I was able to recover them all.