Writing Project - May 2017 Update

For the month of May the biggest news in my writing project was that I realized I had a massive plot problem in an early section of the story. In this particular section there are five plot threads running concurrently and I had really screwed them up. To help untangle everything, I went to my white board and tried to draw out each plot line as best I could. Below is a photo I took after a lot of time banging my head against the wall the white board hangs on.

As you can see, I ran out of space due to my white board not being very big, but I think I got to a place where I’ve sorted out the problems and can just write the rest on my computer. You might also note that I used abbreviations for names and only wrote the barest of details. This was partly to save space, and partly because I knew I was going to take this photo and I was paranoid that someone would see it and steal my ideas. Obviously this is a very silly fear, seeing as how my ideas aren’t worth stealing, but I won’t take the risk that someone else will getting the credit for my terrible story.

More Destiny 2 Details Revealed

While I was in New York City there was a major Destiny 2 reveal event. After my return to Colorado I went online to read up on the new details about the game that developer Bungie gave out and today I’m going to give my thoughts on some of the announcements I care about. I will not be saying anything about Destiny 2’s story, as I’m trying to go into the game with minimal story details.

Grimoire Cards are gone. Hallelujah. In my opinion the Grimoire Cards were one of Destiny’s most egregious errors, as they contained interesting pieces of the game’s lore, but in order to actually view them you had to go to Bungie’s website or download the Destiny companion app. I’m really quite mystified as to why Bungie ever thought the Grimoire cards were a good idea in the first place, but I’m glad that they listened to player feedback and are doing away with them. According to Bungie, all lore in Destiny 2 will be in the game itself. I could not be more satisfied with this announcement.

Destiny 2’s framerate will be locked at 30 frames per second on consoles—that is, on the consoles currently on the market (no details were given regarding Destiny 2’s performance on the upcoming Project Scorpio Xbox). Even PlayStation 4 Pro will be locked at 30 frames per second, though it will run Destiny 2 at a 4K resolution. According to Bungie, the PlayStation 4 Pro’s CPU simply isn’t powerful enough to run the game at 60 frames per second. It’s not that big deal to me that Destiny 2 will be running at 30 frames per second on console, seeing as how Destiny ran at 30 frames per second and I had absolutely no issues with its performance, but it would have been nice if Destiny 2 could find a way to get to 60 frames per second on console.

Jumping from one mission or planet to another will be done without going into orbit in Destiny 2. In Destiny you had to go to your ship in orbit to launch the next major activity and although it wasn’t a massive time sink it did strike me as an unnecessary middle step in-between the things you did in the game. Cutting out going into orbit will be a small, but welcome time saver.

Weapons slots have been redesigned to supposedly allow more player choice. Instead of a primary, secondary, and heavy weapon slot, there will now be a kinetic, energy, and power weapon slot. The energy and kinetic slots can potentially hold the same weapons, so it sounds like you will now be able to hold two primary weapons. This might be a useful feature but I’m going to have to wait until I play Destiny 2 to give a concrete opinion on the new slot system.

All game modes in Destiny 2’s multiplayer will be 4v4. As a gamer who is a fan of big team battles like the kind you find in games like Battlefield, this is a little disappointing. Then again, I don’t play a lot of multiplayer, so this won’t affect me too much.

There will finally be matchmaking for Raids—sort of. A new system in Destiny 2 called “Guided Games” will allow clans to be paired with solo players to complete Raids, as well as Trials. As a solo player myself, I never got to experience any of the Raids in Destiny, so I’m really glad Bungie is creating a way for people like me to play them.

Bolder Boulder 2017 Results

This morning I completed the 2017 Bolder Boulder. Things didn’t go so well this year. My hip joints were in a fair amount of pain during most of the race and my knees gave out around the start of the last mile. On the plus side I can say that I reached the finish line without stopping to walk, but my final time was 62:27, which was way over my target time of 60 minutes. After the race I got my snack bag and then spent 15 or so minutes going around the expo area and loading up on freebies. I then hobbled back to my car and drove home. Right now I’m trying to rest and heal and I’m debating whether or not I should go to the gym tomorrow. I normally go to the gym after I get off work, and I probably won’t have a decision until I’m leaving the office tomorrow.

New York City Food

While I was in New York City I had a chance to sample some of the various food offerings the city is known for. A lot of it was very good, but I’m not ready to agree with the locals and say that New York City has the best food in the world. In fact, I have a theory about New York City food. I suspect that New Yorkers treat their food similar to the way Californians treat In-N-Out. Growing up in California, I, like most others from that state, was intensely loyal of In-N-Out. It had the best burgers in the whole world, and to even think otherwise was heresy of the highest order. I think New Yorkers suffer from a similar form of food fanaticism and simply can’t get it in their heads that there might be better food somewhere outside their city. New York food is great, just like In-N-Out is great, but to say it’s the best in the world might be a stretch.

Related to this, I didn’t have the opportunity to visit a New York City grocery story, but from what I hear they’re not as good as what we have out here in the West. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’m inclined to believe it. Especially after living in Boulder for over a decade, I’d pit our best grocery stores against their best grocery stores and be very confident wagering money on our superiority.

Ima Fire Tiger wants you to know he takes issue with yesterday’s post

I’M A FIRE TIGER AND I’LL EAT AVOCADO TOAST WHENEVER THE @#$% I WANT, THANK YOU! WHEN I GO OUT I BUY WHATEVER CATCHES MY EYE, AND NOTHING CATCHES MY EYE LIKE $19.00 OF SMASHED AVOCADO ON A SINGLE PIECE OF BREAD! I CAN’T CONTROL MY CULINARY NEEDS, JUST LIKE I CAN’T CONTROL THE LEVEL OF MY VOICE! WHY ELSE DO YOU THINK I TYPE ONLY IN UPPER CASE?! I’M A FIRE TIGER, BABY!

Avocado Toast

You might have noticed last week the fifteen minutes of Internet furor that arose following the comments made by Tim Gurner, a 35 year-old Australian millionaire. Tim Gurner appeared on an Australian television program, and when asked why so few Millennials are yet to buy homes or property he placed the blame on wasteful spending, specifically calling out the expensive coffee drinks and avocado toast that Australian Millennials have a fondness for. As you can imagine, these remarks triggered a fair amount of Internet backlash, with people bringing out many other factors holding Millennials back economically, such as the lack of high-paying blue-collar jobs, massive student debt burdens, the amount of money required to purchase homes in certain regions, and the lack of interest with some Millennials in home ownership. All of these counterarguments have merit, but at the same time none of them fully invalidate Tim Gurner’s claims. Yes, there are a lot of economic barriers that Millennials like myself have to overcome to achieve home ownership, but that doesn’t mean that the way we spend what money we have is a non-factor on our personal economic situation. Tim Gurner is absolutely right in pointing out that struggling Millennials can’t spend absurd amounts of money on overpriced coffee, culinary indulgences like avocado toast, (which apparently is an appetizer that costs about $19) and other unnecessary things and expect to get ahead economically. They can do one or the other, but not both. From my own experience I’d like to suggest to my fellow Millennials that the path of financial prudence and personal responsibility, unpleasant as it may be at times due to the denial of enjoyable but wasteful things, is the far better option in life—at least until you get your financial house in order. Once that’s done, then you can enjoy your avocado toast knowing that you’re not screwing yourself over.

Fox News

I’ve been watching bits and pieces of Fox News. Now, before you drive your daggers into me while repeatedly screaming “SHAME!” let me explain to you why. Almost all of my television exposure these days happens at my gym. One of the elliptical machines I like to use has a TV screen on it and during my workout I prefer to select a channel that can be watched without taking too much of my focus off my workout. Oftentimes this means putting on CNN or ESPN, however with CNN it seems that the channel is now exclusively devoted to tearing down the presidency of Donald Trump. While I’m no fan of Trump myself, I would like to see what else is going on in America and around the world, and Fox News meets that desire. Yes, I’m well aware of the conservative bias inherent in Fox News, much like I’m aware of the liberal bias inherent in MSNBC and to a lesser degree in CNN, but at least Fox News isn’t pretending that nothing else besides Donald Trump is going on. You might even be surprised to learn that not all the people I saw on Fox News are supportive of Donald Trump. Then again, I guess that really shouldn’t be surprising, seeing as how Fox News falls more in line with the Republican Party establishment, which Donald Trump certainly is not a part of.

Catching up on media

I got back from a four day trip New York City late last night and currently I’m in the grips of a classic First World problem—getting caught up on all the videos, podcasts, articles, and other media that were published while I was gone. On trips where I’m away from my normal online routine for about a week or longer I usually do not have this problem, as the amount of media published during that long of an absence is so considerably vast that I just give up on trying to consume all of it and I pretend like everything that was published while I was gone never happened. With journeys like the one to New York City where I was away for only a few days, however, the amount of media consumption required to catch up is substantial, but doable, and I feel strangely compelled to put in the effort required to get myself back to being current with the parts of the online world that I partake of. Today I had the advantage of working from home, meaning that I could freely have videos and podcasts playing in the background while I grinded away at my tasks, and as of the time of the publishing of this writing piece I’m nearly caught up. Tomorrow I expect to once again be current with my online world, but today’s experience, like all similar experiences I’ve had in the immediate aftermath of other short-term trips, suggests that I may be placing too high a value on the media take in. Thus I have decided that whenever I take my next short-term trip I’m going to make a conscious effort not to try to consume everything that came out while I was gone. A few high priority items will still get my time and attention, but others will be let go of. This should make for a less stressful aftermath of future journeys.

A Special Kind of Power

While driving to work I was listening to a radio show and the hosts mentioned a woman who had stated that she had to increase the dosage of her anxiety medication due to Donald Trump’s presidency. Upon first hearing her tale I dismissed it as another example of an unstable individual who couldn’t come to grips with reality. Later that day, however, I realized that there actually was something very interesting going on in that woman’s life. Donald Trump, not by actually doing anything to this woman but merely by the fact of his existence, is inflicting a debilitating level of anxiety on her and able to completely wreck her life without lifting a finger. That’s a very special kind of power—the type usually only wielded by the most notorious of human dictators (a status Donald Trump does not hold and never will) or by the most nefarious beings found in various forms of fiction. It is a power that drives people insane with fear, but at the same time is a power that cannot be directly controlled by its user. The only way this power works is if the target allows the fear to control them. If instead the target refuses to be captivated by that power, then it will have no hold over them or their mental or emotional state. In the case of the woman being discussed on the radio, she is ceding to Donald Trump the ability to incapacitate her even though it’s highly unlike Donald Trump knows of her existence or particularly cares about her anxiety issues. Unless that woman learns to stop giving Donald Trump that power she’s going to have a very rough time for the remainder of his presidency.

Ima Fire Tiger!!!

I’m not just a Tiger, I’m a Fire Tiger, baby! When I was in elementary school I remember learning about the twelve different animals of the Chinese zodiac, and being born in the year that I was made me a Tiger. As it turns out, there are five subdivisions within each animal—fire, earth, water, gold, and wood—and the particular Tiger year of my birth was a Fire year. According to a website I found online, people born in the year of the Tiger are brave, competitive, unpredictable, self-confident, charming, and likable, but also can be stubborn, impetuous, irritable, and overindulged. On top of all this, being a Fire Tiger means I tend to be optimistic and independent, with poor self-control. Those who know me personally can judge how accurate those descriptions are of the real me, but I’d be a fool to not take full advantage of this new information that I’ve learned about myself. Thus, I’ve created yet another alter ego of mine—this one called Ima Fire Tiger. Full credit for the inspiration behind the name goes to my friend Ben over a Free Refills. Going forward, Ima Fire Tiger will make occasional appearances in my writings. Don’t worry, it will be painfully clear when he shows up. Ima Fire Tiger will strive to embody those Fire Tiger characteristics to their fullest, especially the lack of self-control.