Gaming, Hunches and wandering through the weekend

Entry 01/20/2013 12:26:19 PM – Mentat 678

静けさの中１粒堕ちただけ – 広がる波紋に波うつ井戸の底 – KOKIA

As it turns out, I just can’t seem to sit still or keep my focus on much of anything this morning. And to think it started out quite well too… It was quiet enough, no unusual noise or drama. No police, hell no one in the apartment complex seemed to be up other than me. Not even the toddlers on the first floor… Decided to give Ingress a go in my neighborhood just to confirm what I was seeing on the Intel Map was accurate (it was and then some). An hour and a half later after walking 1.5 miles (2.4 km), I’m home, get a half-dozen pictures of potential portal sites submitted to the Super-Ops for consideration and hopefully in a couple of weeks, some of the submissions will show up on the map. And a couple of hours later, with a few failed attempts of playing a couple of online games on the PC, I can’t for the life of me seem to sit still enough to actually play them. I decided to see if eating lunch and watching a movie while I write will calm me down enough to do something. We’ll see if it works, or I end up continuing to be antsy and fidgety.

During my walk through the neighborhood I went to check out the one and only portal in walking distance to the house and it turns out that it’s been taken over by the Resistance… And by someone that’s rather prolific about ensuring practically all of downtown Providence is Resistance controlled too. Pity with me being such a lowbie, the two hack attempts ended miserably and with no chance in the Nine Hells of being able to do much of anything (other than getting my power reserved burned down). But hopefully there will be some new portals in 4 – 6 weeks that I can get my level/score up enough to have a go at the local heavyweights I’m not sure about the leveling scheme of this game… Folk in the Intel Map Chats say it’s pretty quick when you can actually find a portal (or three) to hack and secure, but the problem with this side of the city (and more importantly this side of the state), it looks like Google/Ingress is only just setting up and most of the portals (including their placement) are done by students and working class types in the Downtown/Financial District part of the city. Re-checking the map, it looks as though the lower portions of College Hill are also part of the Resistance. Hopefully with my eye for the rules and wandering around the part of the city I live in, more should be popping up soon enough and if I get the chance, get my score/level up in no time.

I was also checking out Schemer for less game-like/spy-craft, and more things to do outside of the house, but for the life of me continually got an error about location settings needing to be on when they’re on. Although, thinking about it as I was writing this, I ended up checking out the phone, the forums and anything else I could dig up to see what the problem was with me getting that error. As it turns out there’s a drop down menu with the option to disables location services altogether. Seemed to be set to this as “default”. Changing the option from the one that clearly reads “disabled” to “My Neighborhood” or “Map” automatically updates the location and gives me various schemes to check out. I’ll have to give that a go the next time I’m hauled about for errands to see if the map updates properly, or whether it’s something I need to investigate further. Not sure whether this is something I’m going to recommend to friends just yet, given that the suggestions I’m seeing from other folk seriously needs to be worked on, but it’s enough for me to idle some of my out-of-the-neighborhood time… Pity most of them involve money, but I’m sure that when I have more of it (money), it (schemer) might actually be worthwhile.

Alright… 75 minutes later, and I’m still antsy as hell, though at least I’m sated and a bit more relaxed than I was before lunch. Which says it was more because of my sugar being a bit low and the morning coffee doing more to me than I thought possible. Still though, I got too much energy, way too many thoughts going through my head, and perhaps a bit too much adrenaline in the bloodstream than I should have. Perhaps I’ll wander off to meditate a bit and come back to this when I can organize my thoughts a bit better.

[Last Edited: 01/21/2013 07:55:05 AM]

After a quick meditation and following a hunch yesterday, I checked out something from the Intel Map that showed an unclaimed (for lack of a better word) portal in the middle of the Chalkstone area and after a brisk walk was able to find it. Sure enough… It was right in front of the public library in the area. Only thing is that it’s Sunday, and the library’s closed so me standing out in front of it would be suspicious in its own right. I’ll try laying down a couple of more resonators tomorrow when the library’s open and things look more unsuspicious than today. But I got the idea on how quick it’s going to be (which the time in the game is completely off. 300 seconds seemed to go by in ½ the time). And I also got the idea on how quick it’s going to be to level up, which isn’t quite as quick as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it’s going to take quite a lot longer than I had anticipated too… But at least it’ll pass the time and keep me out of the house for a bit when the weather’s a bit warmer… Like this afternoon where it hit a high of 54 F (12 C)…

Well, I was finally able to get my head settled down enough to sit long enough to play a couple of games and even watch a couple of videos. Damn if it didn’t take long enough to do that too. I think it was because of the second walk that did it and the satisfaction of following through on the hunch that I had. I was able to even calm enough of my thoughts to actually appreciate the music I was listening to, instead of feeling the need to listen for the sake of drowning out the world around me, which has been a habit of mine entirely too much as of late.

On the whole though, in my pre-caffeinated state as I sit here and wait for my coffee to brew and bagel to toast, I’m feeling pretty all right. I know I’m going into work today even if it’s for a half day. Not sure whether this is going to be one of those “wander in on my own” sort of days or whether Ed’s going to go in and then call over. He’s the carpenter/construction worker that’s helping my landlord with putting up the slatting for the dry-wall around the place. It’s pretty much complete on the concrete walls, all that’s left at the moment is reinforcing the dividing wall between the “office area” and the gallery/garage for the Art-mobile. Of course my work’s going to be pushed soon as I’ll be painting the floors on the loft, followed by continuing the painting/work on the dividing door between the main garage door and the gallery/garage. Though thinking about it, I might have to push for painting the garage door as it was a quick and dirty hack job and if I’m going to be airbrush/painting the door — it should be done before the drywalls are up and painted white as well. Particularly given that 4 months after painting the ceiling all black, there’s still black dust all over the place — particularly the loft area which has been swept, blown off and vacuumed constantly since.

I should go. I should be doing my own housework here before I head out. And it does need to be done. Until the next time.