Cameraphone Zen (catchup post)

October 6th:

October 8th:

October 9th:

October 10th:

October 11th:

October 12th:

October 13th:

October 14th:

Cameraphone Zen

(Yesterday's) Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

(Yesterday's) Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Various Thoughts and stuff

I caught Inkwell on video meowsaging me:

If this works, you should be able to see the video I posted of the event on Facebook. He actually does this to me almost every night, and sometimes in the mornings. He's kind of tucking me into bed. There is sound on the video, and if you dare to turn it up, you can hear Inkwell's purring. Because he's literally on my face as he does this, the sound is deafening to me. It didn't come across on the video as loud as I hear it when he's doing it.

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Eric lost his glasses. I was wandering around town catching Pokemon, and got back to find a frantic email about it. I looked around the house and didn't see them, and did a quick walk around the house outside. He had written that if he dropped them outside, it was most likely at the water switch in the back yard. So I looked, but didn't see them. I went back inside and did a much more thorough search of the house before I remembered the security cam. If he had his glasses in his pocket, I might be able to see it on the cam. So I looked! Sure enough, he had his sunglasses on his face and his regular glasses in his front shirt pocket as he locked the door on his way out.

Ok. With that in mind, I realized I was going to have to retrace his steps, which might mean walking all the way to his school. Bleh. I'd just gotten *back* from a long walk. So I decided to circle the house three times before I started out retracing his steps. I walked around once, scanning the ground, and didn't see them. The second time, I focused on the areas near the house. In the deepest shadow near the AC unit I spotted something. Sure enough, it was his glasses! Whew, I didn't have to walk all the way out. (The third time round I would have focused on the areas furthest from the house, but I didn't have to do it, yay!)

I delivered them to his school by driving there (and sitting in the parking lot catching a couple of Pokemon before I went in) and then went home to rest. He was delighted. Neither of us can figure out how they managed to fall out of his pocket into the deepest shadow near the AC unit - which isn't all that close to the water switch.

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When my sister and mother came out to go to Adam West Day with me, we first went out to visit my mother's favorite quilt shop in Prosser. I was happy to find a couple of Pokestops in the area, and surprised that my sister had just, that day, started playing the game in the hopes it will have the same positive effect of getting her out walking that it did with me. While mother had a great deal of fun in the quilt shop, I explained some of the little bit of Pokemon lore I've learned so far to my sister and we repeatedly hit the Pokestops. It was fun. I ended up with two new gym badges, one at the memorial in my Cameraphone Zen for Sep 18, and the other a boring Starbucks one near the freeway exit (we were stopped at a light long enough for me to spin it).

We also visited Chukar Cherries, which is literally across the river from the quilt shop. There was another gym across the street from it that I managed to spin as well. I ended up getting three gym badges in Prosser, but only two in Walla Walla (despite spending a lot more time in Walla Walla).

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I have been walking my fish.

Time for some Poke-nerdism! The special research tasks apparently introduced to the game recently have various steps to completion. In the step I'm on in one of the tasks, I need to turn a Magikarp (that floppy giant goldfish) into a Gyarados. In order to do this, I have to collect 400 Magikarp "candy". You get three pieces of candy for catching a Pokemon, and one piece if you send that Pokemon to the professor to be studied (basically, you throw it away and get a reward). The other way to collect candy is to walk with your Pokemon as your "buddy". So I have been walking with Fishstix here as my buddy in order to get enough candy to feed to him to turn him into a Gyrados. As of tonight, I'm very close to 300 candies.

Most Pokemon do not require 400 candies. There are some that only need 12 candies to evolve, but more normal is 25, 50 or 100. All of which is not hard to reach by catching a whole lot of Pokemon. Which is the point of the game, and why you need to walk around a lot. The more you walk, the more Pokemon you find, and the more you can evolve your Pokemon and stuff. It's really very fun. And it's got me out walking, which is something I BADLY needed.

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Yesterday was a Pokemon Community Day, and what happens on those days is that suddenly one type of Pokemon will just FLOOD the world. The idea is that you are out and about for three hours, walking with your friends and everyone is catching a ton of this one particular type of Pokemon. The last community day, in August, was when my sister got me addicted to the game by having me carry her spare phone and catch Eevee on a long walk with her, another sister, my niece and brother-in-law. Side note: if you are confused about my sisters, I have four of them and three of them have been mentioned in this post so far.

Anyway, so yesterday was the new Community Day, and of COURSE I went out to catch Pokemon...

I caught plenty. I even got two that were special "Shiny" ones, although I'm not entirely sure what to do with them, since their stats are awful.

I originally intended to walk for three hours, strolling around the park and sitting for a portion of the time. I was hoping to meet some other local players. Well... it was very odd. There were other people, but they pretty much all stayed in their cars and went from area to area by car. I didn't get to talk to even one of them.

Only a couple of days earlier I met another player who friended me on the app. He didn't get out of his car, either. But we talked a bit, and we've been sending gifts back and forth, the way the game allows. On Friday I "met" a car-full of people who were on my same team (Team Mystic) when we all took over two gyms together. I waved at them, but they did not get out of their car.

So apparently the local fans are very car-centric. I suppose, with the small-town fear of gangs and stuff, that it's not so strange. A bit sad and depressing, but not strange.

With no one to talk to, or walk with, I decided to just head for home. So I walked home. From the park. I worked out that I must've walked a bit more than two and a half miles over the course of two hours. That's nothing compared to what I used to be capable of, but it was difficult for me yesterday and I ended up taking only a half mile today. However, I got home with an hour to spare in the event and spent the rest of the time relaxing and culling the worst of my catches and evolving a couple of the lovelies to their final form.

I kept the app open, and after the event ended, a really really strange Pokemon showed up:

When I caught them, they turned into the shape-changing Ditto. But before now, Ditto has always shown up as a known type of Pokemon, so finding these in the wild was... well, wild. And I ended up catching four of them and spotting two more before the day was done. I don't think I've seen any today - certainly none close enough to catch (there's a radar in the corner that shows you nearby Pokemon, but I don't always pay attention to it when I'm not walking).

So... that was community day.

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Last week I mentioned that I was recording a podcast with Rob Kelly. You can now listen to that podcast at the Fire & Water website. I haven't quite worked up the nerve to listen to it yet (I'm one of those people who cannot stand the sound of my own voice). If you listen to it, please let me know what you thought.

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I spent an unfortunate amount of time today looking for nerdy boxer shorts for my husband to wear around the house and outside when he gets the newspaper or turns the irrigation water on. You know, shorts. But boxers. I looked everywhere, and apparently it's a current trend that boxers not be boxers, but briefs with long legs. Every place I looked had "boxer briefs" and almost no actual boxers. The times I did find interesting designs, they didn't have his size. I have currently given up the search. A few years back I got him some very cool Doctor Who and Justice League boxers. But the band is nearly worn through on the Justice League and I'm not sure how much longer the Doctor Who boxers will hold out. So I'm going to need to find some more boxer shorts soonish (He's letting me buy them because "You're the one who is looking at them most of the time.").

After giving up on boxers, I started looking at Pokemon T-shirts (hey, I'm obsessed. It happens with me. Deal with it.). I found a number of shirts I wouldn't mind getting and even added a few to Amazon wish list. My favorite may be the Going to the Gym shirt. But even Eric thinks this one is appropriate for me:

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

(Yesterday's) Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Cameraphone Zen

Various Thoughts

After the scare with Inkwell the other day, we decided to finally get him chipped. It was a mostly painless process. I had to take him in for his vaccinations and asked the vet about chipping. I learned it was only about $35 and the vet would be happy to do it, but maybe we should get Inkwell a little drowsy/painkilled first. So he gave me a medication to give to Inkwell the night before and the morning of the chipping. The night before, Inkwell realized there was something in his food and didn't want to finish it. I had to bribe him a little with treats that I let him smell, the put into the wet food. That night he was drowsy. He tried to "tuck me in" but kept falling asleep while he massaged me (he sits on my chest, usually right after I go to bed, and purrs loudly while massaging me). Eventually he gave up and wandered off.

The next morning, Inkwell was having NONE of it. He sniffed the food, then moved away and sat there glaring - at me, at the wall, at anything except the food. Eventually I got him to eat it, as it was food and Inkwell is part piggy when it comes to food. By the time of his appointment, he was drowsy and feeling no pain. I picked him up to put him in his carrier and he sort of melted in my hands. It wasn't his usual defiance, more of a 'I can't be bothered' feel. Once in the carrier, he huddled in the back and made only one weak protesting meow on the way to the vet. I decided against going in to see the chipping, because they had described "a large needle" and I had enough trouble watching him get his vaccinations. He came out looking fine, and the vet said he was perfectly behaved. No problems. He barely even bled.

He's recovered now, but for a very short time it was disturbing to see him so limp and sleepy. At least he's chipped so hopefully if he manages to get outside again he'll be quickly found and returned.

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In other news, the security camera is working very well, but does have a few little quirks. The alarm checks for differences in light between seconds in the areas set to be watched, and that's enough that an insect flying right in front of the lens will set it off, as will a car driving by late at night with brights on, or, as I learned today, a quick change from sunny to cloudy. As the alarms aren't too frequent to stand, it's still a good cam and a fun toy as well as a nice little investment for security.

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I'm just going to quote myself from Facebook: September 13 at 12:11 PM

Oh dear.

I'd heard of this, but I finally saw it in action myself for the first time. Pokemon Go nerdism coming up.

So in the game, you visit Pokestops. The locations of the Pokestops are usually historic markers, city buildings, churches... that sort of thing. Now, I know a lot about this city, so when I saw a Pokestop that said "Historic Windmill" I was confused. As far as I knew, there was no such thing.

After a pain-shortened walk this morning (only a half mile) I decided to hunt down this mysterious Pokestop. I had memorized the location on the map, so I headed out there and drove down the street. I parked, and opened the game, and there's the Pokestop. But I don't see any windmill.

I kind of sighed and took one last look, then drove a ways down the road to turn around. When I got turned around, I finally saw it.

It was a tiny windmill in somebody's yard.

Yes, it matched the photo on the Pokestop - which was clearly taken from below to make the windmill look bigger.

I spent the next few minutes laughing my guts out, then headed home. I don't plan on reporting it, since whoever managed to get it through their system did a good job with it. Nor do I plan to go out there again, since it's out of the way (which is probably why they did it).

I did make me wonder, though - If Eric and I were to build a TARDIS and put it in our yard, could we eventually get a Pokestop if we made it public enough? And would we *want* to do that?

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DC Universe went live, and to my dismay the app won't run on my old iPad Mini. First world problems, of course. Eventually I should be able to get a new iPad. But in the meantime, if I want to watch DC Universe, I can't do it while playing DCUO easily.

I checked out some of the comics on DC Universe and was sad to see that, although they have some early More Fun Comics, the books are incomplete. I don't recall seeing any Aquaman stories in anything but More Fun #73, and it was the recolored version, not the original.

Still, the amount of video content they've got is very impressive, and I'm sure I'll get my money's worth out of it.

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Speaking of More Fun Comics, I recorded an episode of the Fire and Water Podcast with Rob Kelly today. We talked about several issues of More Fun Comics, along with another Golden Age book. It should be released in about a week, so go check it out.

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Lastly, I've been keeping up with my walking, as you can probably see from my Cameraphone Zen posts. Each post means at least a half mile walked that day. One day I got a half mile in, then later that night decided to walk around the neighborhood catching Pokemon. My Facebook post: "Long evening walk, catching Pokemon. I got 39 Pokemon, walked 1.4 km, and am sweating like nobody's business. And I feel great."

I've done the neighborhood walk a couple of times when I felt like I didn't get enough of a walk in downtown. If there were any Pokestops within a half mile of walk of my house, I would have started with those and worked up to walking downtown. I suppose it's just as well.

I can report that I now have visited all the gyms and almost all the Pokestops in this town. I also have at least a bronze badge at all the gyms (which just means I put Pokemon in them, or battled a raid in them, or something like that). I also have a gym badge from another nearby town, since we went there for cheap gasoline and groceries the other day.

I will be headed to Walla Walla on Wednesday for Adam West Day and pulled up the Pokestop map. I'm delighted to see that a museum I wanted to visit last year, but was closed on Adam West Day, will be open this year AND it has a gym. Yay, at least one new badge! The plaza where the opening ceremonies will take place also has a gym, so as long as we get there in good time, I'll have a little Pokemon hunting to do along with the Adam Westivities.

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So, that's been my week. I hope yours has gone as well or better.