Slice of Chaotic Life

The daily life of a celibate middle-aged man.

Ingress journal: Painting Grimstad green

Posted by Itlandm on July 13, 2013

Today I took the bus to Grimstad. It takes an hour from Kristiansand and costs about $20 each way, so it is not something I would normally do. But the 10 portals in downtown Grimstad have been gray for a while now. Grimstad used to belong to the Resistance, and seemed to be the home base of their agent @andasil, who also for a while maintained a colony in Kristiansand, but he has gradually withdrawn and now even Grimstad is deserted. I hope he is OK, even if he is misguided enough to join the Resistance. ^_^ Hopefully he is just on vacation, and will be happy to see that I have not let his portals lie idle.

I stayed for a little under two hours. The weather there was cloudy, as it was also in Kristiansand when I passed through, so I did not need to worry overmuch about sunburn. I hacked the portals repeatedly (although the ones by the church, a bit out of the way, only got hacked twice). I got two keys for one portal and one for three others, so it could have been worse. Not enough to make fields though – I am keeping the keys to recharge for now.

On the way back, the bus stopped by the university, not far from the two recalcitrant portals that refused to give me keys on Monday and Thursday even though I burned them out. Today they had evidently changed their mind, for each of them coughed up a key on my first hack! Now I can recharge them remotely and not need to walk at my best speed for 20 minutes to get there and 20 minutes back. Well, of course none of us knows what the future brings, but that was the plan.

The clouds had retreated, unfortunately, and the ionizing radiation of this planet’s star is overwhelming the regenerative abilities of my epidermal cells. My face is getting hotter and redder for each day I venture outdoors. And by “face” I now also mean my big forehead, from which my fur has shamefully retreated over the last few years. But I came home to Mandal and found a third portal had gone online here. I claimed it FOR GREAT ENLIGHTENMENT!! so all in all it was a good day.

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Ingress journal: Hacking, hacking, hacking!

Posted by Itlandm on July 12, 2013

I installed the rare multihack mod on the portal outside my workplace. My scanner area sometimes drift far enough to hack it from my desk, but it is only a minute or two walking even if not.  Normally I can hack it 4 times early in the day, then it burns out. (You can only hack 4 times in 4 hours without a mod, but you can pace those as you wish, as long as they are at least 5 minutes apart.)

Now with the rare multi-hack, I can hack it 12 times in 4 hours. That amounts to once every 20 minutes. Now, hacking takes only a few seconds, so I could probably do that without interfering much with my work unless I have phone duty, which I rarely have due to my throat problems. But I haven’t set up a timer to remind me every 20 minutes, and as a result I actually never burned it out over the course of the workday. By the time I had hacked 12 times, it was already into the next 4-hour slot.

The nearby portal is owned by the Enlightenment, of course. We pretty much own the south coast at the moment, despite the occasional Resistance tourist. Actually it would have been nice to have a blue portal (I had one for a while) since I get 100 Action Points for hacking those, but no AP for hacking our own. On the other hand, friendly portals tend to give more loot. And of course, it is only friendly portals I can outfit with a mod such as this.

I sent a message to Agent @B3ll3rophon, begging him to throw a couple high-level resonators on the portal (he is level 7 or 8) so it could get up to my own level. That way I can get more level-appropriate loot. As mentioned, I can only raise a portal to level 3 when I am level 4.

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Ingress journal: West coast agent 2

Posted by Itlandm on July 11, 2013

Today, I met with agent @putney from the Bergen area. We exchanged keys: I gave him a bunch of keys for Kristiansand and to one of the Mandal portals (the other he already had as many as I). He gave me a couple keys from Norway’s west coast and three from Vigeland, two of which I used immediately to make a series of control fields and one I keep to recharge the same portal. He also gave me a rare multi-hack and a heat sink, whereas I gave him a number of turrets and force amplifiers, which are mostly useful in larger parks of densely packed portals, or so it seems to me.

Agent @putney also reported from Bergen and pointed out a number of locations in Mandal that he thought would be likely to become portals, based on his experience from Bergen and its surroundings. Of course, the higher population density in Bergen may possibly influence the portal density as well, although this is not verified.

Being level 6, Agent @putney also upgraded my two portals in Mandal to level 4 (which is the highest you can get a portal to at level 6). They were formerly level 3, while I am level 4, so now they should give more appropriate loot. Well, strictly speaking not: Portals generally give goodies that is within 2 levels from the lower of the portal and the agent hacking it, in my experience. I am not sure of the exact formula. Most objects are within 1 level difference, however. And I can’t actually use level 5 gear until I turn level 5 myself, which is unlikely to happen this summer, if things continue like they have…

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Ingress journal: Stingy portals 2

Posted by Itlandm on July 11, 2013

Now that I know the way, and the weather was favorable (slightly cloudy and a light breeze) I made it to Gimle high school in less than 20 minutes, but that was a very brisk walk. Once again I dumped all of the 6000 XM from my little level 4 scanner into the resonators, and all the XM surrounding them when I arrived. I hacked them approximately every 5 minutes, which is the cooldown without a heat sink mod. My Galaxy Tab 7.7 decided at one point to not receive mobile data, and I had to temporarily set up my mobile phone as an access point.

By the end of the 4th hack for each, I still had no portal key. Not a one. I have hacked each of them 8 times over these two days, and not got 1 portal key. You would definitely expect a portal key after 16 hacks, but it is as if they know I need that portal key to not have come visit them.

The XM around the portal regenerated before I left, so I dumped that into them as well. With this they should be able to survive today and tomorrow and last until Saturday. I had hoped that I could remote recharge them so I could go to Grimstad on Saturday and capture the 10 or so portals there that have been gray for a week. Now I’m facing the possibility of having to choose bebutween the two high-level portals at Gimle or 10 low-level portals in Grimstad. (Going to Grimstad means an hour bus ride each way, and the typically Norwegian expensive bus fare, so it is a very real choice – if I even have the health to do either of them at the time. If not, the Gimle portals will decay, first to a lower level and eventually to gray if I can’t get to them in a few days.

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Routine doctor visit

Posted by Itlandm on June 27, 2013

Yesterday was routine dentist visit, no holes. Today was routine doctor visit, no holes that shouldn’t be there. They took three large vials of blood. I am not sure why they can’t just use the same one for all the tests, but there is probably a reason. And I still have plenty left.

I did not get the results, but I got the results from my previous check in January (I think it was, or was it December?) Everything was great then. Even my blood sugar was in the acceptable range, which surprised me. I did not even know that was possible for me. I eat almost exclusively carbs, since I cannot absorb more than small amounts of fat and see no reason to eat excessive amounts of protein, which is usually wasteful to produce. I get plenty enough in the milk products I eat daily though.

He checked my pulse (60) and my blood pressure, which was just peachy. (12o over something in the European measurements, I have no idea what this is in the last stronghold of strange units, but it seemed to make the doctor happy.) He is also satisfied with my weight, which is around 84 now. It was 85 in winter, but once I started traipsing around outdoors, it fell to the same level as last year. Most humans who lose weight, gain it again after some months, so that was probably why he was so pleased. He has this theory that I won’t get diabetes unless I put those few pounds back on. My mother had serious diabetes and my earthly father also supposedly has some of it, so when I got “pre-diabetes” or insulin resistance a couple years ago, my doctor got worried. I think my lifelong exercise asthma is more worrisome: Without it, I could run for miles every week, what with this insanely low resting pulse. Then there would be no insulin resistance. On the other hand my food bills would go up, I guess. Silver lining!

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Routine dentist visit

Posted by Itlandm on June 26, 2013

Dentist visit was originally scheduled for tomorrow, but I already had a doctor appointment then. Since I can never know for sure how long a doctor visit will take, even a routine checkup, I asked for another time for the dentist, and actually got a day earlier!

No holes, and the only thing that hurt was my wallet.  I told him, and he was amused. ^_^

If the dentists of my childhood and youth had space age equipment like this (and the skills to use it), my mouth would have looked rather different now. So there are some benefits to growing up in this age, challenging as it may otherwise be! Of course, there are benefits to us who simply were allowed to survive into this age too – my grandmother had lost all her teeth before I remember, and my grandfather most of his. Now I am of the same age as the current grandparent generation, and miss only a few teeth, and years go by where I don’t have even a tiny hole.

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More excessive Ingressing

Posted by Itlandm on June 23, 2013

Traipsed around from portal to portal for about four hours yesterday, an hour and a half today.  I guess four hours is a bit excessive even for me. Tonight my left foot hurts a little, perhaps it is related. Also, I have been hungry much of the day, getting hungry shorter time after meals than usual.

I suppose it is the human condition for most people, to have a hard time stopping when they are full. But for me this is most pronounced when I am physically active.  Well, perhaps I should eat something less delicious, that would help me stop as soon as the hunger is stilled. I’ve eaten a lot of fruit yogurt lately.

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Excessive outdoorsyness

Posted by Itlandm on May 26, 2013

Yesterday I was out walking in the sun for 3-4 hours in a stretch. This was not the best possible idea, I guess, judging from my bright red nose and forehead today. So today I waited until late in the afternoon before taking the bus to Kristiansand to hack portals. The sun was setting when I took the bus home. But that was two and a half hours later. I guess it adds up, because I feel even more tired than yesterday.

I did not jog, just walked and walked. But evidently there are limits even to that. I haven’t really been exercising more than an hour at a time at all this year. Last summer I would typically follow a 5-quarter many days, but this year I mostly take the 40-minute route (over the new bridge). I have read in numerous popular science articles that there is little benefit in exercising more than 30 minutes a day. I already do approximately that just getting to work and back, not to mention any trips in the lunch break. So adding another 40 minutes after I come home is pure luxury, I guess, but I often enjoy it.

Evidently adding a couple more hours to that requires my body to make some adjustments. Pulse remains 10-15 beats over normal throughout the rest of the evening. If I don’t have an infection without knowing it, the higher pulse usually means the body is busy changing something. Perhaps adding new tiny blood vessels to muscles, or adding glycogen to muscles or liver, or shuffling fat around from long-term deposits to more accessible places. I don’t expect the muscles themselves to bulk up simply from traipsing around on the pavement.

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Darkening?

Posted by Itlandm on May 12, 2013

I have written about these attacks from time to time almost from the beginning of my journal in the late 1990es. Back then I had no idea what they came from. After 2005 I have concluded that they come from eating fat. I can process small quantities of fat, but if I eat a normal Norwegian diet, I get these attacks frequently. If I stick to a low-fat diet, they don’t happen at all.

Usually an attack start by a feeling of intense cold, coming from within. It feels as if I have already spent a lot of time in a cold place and am chilled through. My muscles are stiff and I start shivering and shaking.  The next symptom is usually intense contractions of the bowels, causing abdominal pain and a hurried visit to the bathroom. The stomach is also upset, but not to the point of throwing up, more a deep vague nausea. A sense of dread is typically the third, although these three can sometimes switch places. At this stage my intelligence is reduced – it is hard for me to think clearly, and typing or handwriting is filled with typos; also my senses seem to be dampened, which is why I used to call these attacks “darkenings” before I knew what triggered them. The final stage is overwhelming sleepiness which cannot be resisted. I usually fall asleep in my chair. When I wake up (which I have obviously done every time so far) the attack is over. But my digestion is usually upset for a day or two afterwards.

Today’s attack, if that is what it is, has not been typical. I have been sleepy during the day, napping and waking up just as sleepy. It was similar enough that I thought of Darkening, but without the other symptoms it did not seem reasonable. Then while I was sleepily playing Neverwinter a bit, my heart suddenly started beating very hard. Not extremely fast, but very hard. That certainly made me take notice. Some minutes later, I suddenly started freezing, even though it was not that cold. A little on the chilly side, but nothing as extreme as this (shivering, shaking).  And while my stomach is a little upset, I have not yet had colon spasms.

I know my fat intake has been in the borderlands lately, as I have taken to eating a delicious bread made with oats, sunflower seeds and roasted pumpkin seeds. These seeds are full of fat, and I eat it with mustard and a salad spread made with fine-cut vegetables and mayonnaise. (The mayonnaise is not particularly rich, but this ingredient is one of the ones I tolerate the least usually.) I guess it is possible that I have bumped into the border line of fat intake I can handle, but judging from the incomplete symptoms, I may not have gone far over the line at least.

Or it could be something different, I suppose. The heart gallop is not part of the usual sequence.

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Goo and fresh air

Posted by Itlandm on April 19, 2013

This morning I got up early because I had something in my bronchi and could not breathe freely. I suspect my sinuses, they have been working tirelessly the last few nights filling my nose and throat with thick goo. I guess some of this made it further down, it sometimes does after a few days. It remind me way too much of my childhood when I would wake up unable to breathe from asthma. But this was not asthma, it did not work the same way. Still, I could not keep sleeping like that. As usual, I got better with time, as I coughed up the goo. Around 10 I was fine.

In fact, after I came home from work I took a walk with some jogging to keep the pulse at recommended level. So there was no sign of respiratory problems at that time. It seems to be only at night, especially toward the morning.

Spring arrived fairly late (for the south coast of Norway) and it is still chilly, but no longer below freezing. So I can exercise now, but I do it in moderation at least as I start the season. The arctic winter has not really let me exercise outside, except walking rapidly to and from the bus, about 25 minutes a day. I guess even that is more than some people get, but adding another 35-40 minutes feels good.  Humans just were not created in an office, as I like to say. (Although Martin Luther supposedly believed women were created with larger backsides as a sign that they should sit still. Well, sitting still will surely help those grow even larger, I think.)

 

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