Memorial Day

Ran across this today and it's kind of stuck. Wish I knew who to contribute it to, and I might be paraphrasing a bit.

If you want to thank a veteran, be the kind of American worth fighting for.

Brilliant.

Jack Dorsey May Have Just Saved Twitter

I'm not a fan of Twitter, never have been. But that's not because I don't think the platform is a good idea. In fact, I think it's probably the best social media model available, it's just been allowed to run rampant. In the early "Wild West" days of Web 2.0 when MySpace and Facebook were still just upstarts fighting for dominance, Twitter was just another social media model, but it's potential lay in its simplicity. Of course, it's now evolved into something far beyond it's original boundaries and the time to put up guard rails is long overdue.

Humans need rules. I'm sorry, but it's true. That's why we have laws and law enforcement. But rules and free speech are almost antonyms and censorship is a dangerous endeavor. I'm not advocating censorship, but to simply allow an anything goes communication platform loose upon the world creates problems. There must be some means of self-control that allows checks and balance on the forces that generate damaging content. Do I want the government to do it? Absolutely not. We the People should do it, but we need the tools. It would appear, Dorsey has finally caught on and is providing Twitter users the means to fight back.

The mechanism for combating bots, fake accounts, misinformation and other nefarious posts has been the reporting process, but the reporting function has been limited in scope and transparency. Dorsey is changing the process to address these issues in the coming weeks.

One of the key changes is being able to report a tweet not just as spam, but what type as well. Is it a tweet that attempts to manipulate the service, originates from a bot or fake account, does it include a malicious link?

It remains to be seen how effective this new process will be, but at least the truth might have a fighting chance now.

I think I just might fire that account up again.

Fallout 76 - It Grows On You

So I gave a pretty critical first impression of the game when it first came out, but now I must confess it has started to grow on me a bit. A lot of the game mechanics that many previous Fallout players complained about, me included, have revealed themselves to actually make the game somewhat better. But you have to keep in mind as someone said, this is NOT Fallout 4.5. Fallout 76 is something different.

Hoarding. We were all hoarders in the Fallout's before. Come on, admit it. I've got an entire building in Fallout 4 dedicated to my trophies of legendary weapons, respite with decorative lighting and signage proclaiming my "Weapons Museum" in red neon letters. There's no hoarding in Fallout 76. Use it, or lose it. Yes, it's painful to drop that missile launcher, but it's just bringing you down man. Let it go. Now I will admit, the amount of stuff you could keep in stash was a bit stingy but this week's update helped, and apparently more storage ability is coming. Still, there is no TARDIS-esque infinite storage any more. But really, do you need that .38 pipe revolver when you're above level 5? Reduce everything you don't need to component pieces and throw away or sell the pieces you don't need or have an overabundance of.

Need a break? Get some sleep! I admit, this whole on-line-only no-pause thing had me frustrated for awhile, not being a PvP kind of gamer but it's not a deal breaker. Beds are everywhere and unless you expend a lot of storage space on meds, food and water, you're always in need of health regeneration. So find a bed (in a safe place - they are everywhere) and take a break while your character gets healthy. Any more time needed than the two or three minutes it takes to rejuvenate your health, then you might as well exit the host server. Unless you've claimed a Workstation location, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you will.

Other players. For the most part, everyone is cool in Fallout 76. Sure, you've got your rogue trolls now and then but they'll be dealt with in good time. And for crying out loud, don't shoot someone just because they're in your C.A.M.P. Yes, that's them in your stash box, but they're not taking your stuff. They simply have access to their own stash from ANY stash box, including yours. They cannot take anything from your stash box. So let them use your crafting stations, stash box and maybe you'll make a friend to take on a quest or two. Be cool.

The perk card system. Can't say I'm a big fan, but it is more versatile than in previous games. You can mix and match perk cards at anytime so don't feel you're stuck with what you've got. Change things up if you feel a card isn't doing you any good.

Post your comments on Bethesda's forums. It appears they really are listening and trying to make the game better from player comments.

I think I'm beginning to like it!

Fallout 76 - First Impressions

Intermediate Review - I don't have quite as much time invested in the game as this Forbes Senior Contributor, but must admit I couldn't have said it better myself.  A must read for those Fallout fans still on the fence about purchasing it. - Spoiler alert, like myself, he doesn't recommend it.  This does not mean the game cannot be fixed Bethesda! Get ON IT.

Forbes - Fallout 76 Review - Look Upon My Works And Despair

Update - Aside from my babbling below, here's some real help to get started in the game.

Ten Things I Wish I Knew.... Forbes Magazine.

Am I the only idiot who didn't know you had to have a MS Gold account to play this game?

Making someone kick themselves in the ass for avoiding spoilers or other information about a game before they play it is not a good start. It took five minutes before I finally caved in at the start screen and re-activated my account. Why is this not clearly stated up front? I understand this may change as private servers come on line, but still. I can't play AT ALL if I don't have an active MS Gold account eh? Grrrr.

But let's back up a second. Before you even get that privilege consider this number, 3. As in 3 hours. Even with the physical disc it took over 3 hours to install this game and  there's no starting before it's done either! I saw the progress bar going in increments of tenths of percent and thought..."Are you kidding me?" This is going to take so long that they have to pacify me between whole percent increments? Yep. About 30 secs per 1/10th of a percent load. What's on Netflix?

Calm down...calm down...the game installed, I've caught up on "Last Week Tonight" and I have one month of Gold. No big deal for a game that will easily consume 100 hours of my time. The game is ready! So let's finally go see what this is all about!  Yeah!

WTF?  I spent 10 minutes making a character, create the ID, did a little exploring around the vault, got interrupted in real life and had to put the game down for about twenty minutes and now...I get to start over? Oh, hell no. 10 more minutes spent trying to get my original character back, but nooooo.

But okay...starting over...took a default face. But than there's my custom face still on the ID? I'm confussssssed! But screw it, let's get out of the vault, NOW.  Don't forget your initial stuff! What's this? Oh, perk cards! Yeah, let's level up a bit before we go out. WTF is this, Magic the Gathering?

Old people should stay away from modern games.

Fine. Picked a few cards, got the meager shit in the vault and now I'm outside.  Ewwww. Pretty! Where am I going? Why are my quests hanging in the right hand corner. Right D pad for inventory! WTF? Stimpak? I didn't need a stimpak.  Too bad!  Okay, stop. What's going on with my inventory menu? Ohhh. You changed how it works. I see what you did there. Better? Meh, maybe. We'll see how it goes. Move on!

Fast forward of one hour of poking around the woods, picking flowers, killing dogs, avoiding other players, crafting a few items, a couple of level ups, avoiding the main objective, joining a team event, admiring the scenery and ....

What's on Netflix? Sorry, but unlike Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4 where I'm checking the clock to make sure I leave enough time for a decent's night sleep, I put this game down within an hour. After getting home from work, waiting for the installation, fighting the setup, and then figuring out the new game controls, the desire to continue playing simply fell away.

Oh Bethesda. I'm sure it's a fine game, and I'll come back to it in due time, but for now, color me unimpressed.

It's True - Gmail ignores "dots" in your account name!

I've known for years that you can use the "+" symbol to append words to your gmail username, for example, if your gmail account is "Bob.Barker@gmail.com", you can use "Bob.Barker+anything@gmail.com" and you'll get the email just as you would normally. This is a great tool to help identify spammers and I use it a lot when signing up for services I suspect might bombard me with email once I give them my email address. From there it's a simple matter to setup filters to get rid of them.

I just learned today though that another Gmail superpower is that they ignore the "dots" (periods) in your name as well. It's a subtler version of the "+" append superpower but just as effective. For instance, if you send an email to "BobBarker@gmail.com" (please don't, the poor man just want's to be left alone I'm sure), the email will be delivered! Not only that, but you can add periods as well, for example Bob.Bark.er@gmail.

So if someone asks for your gmail account and it's "First.Last@gmail.com", just omit the period or add one or two and you can identify the sender easily.

Pretty damn cool Google.

QIL - The United States Bill of Rights

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." The United States Supreme Court.

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 1943


vicissitude -A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant. Oxford Living Dictionary  B- had to look this one up myself!

Presence of Liguid Water on Mars Confirmed!

This is big news. While evidence has been mounting for the presence of water in a liquid state on Mars for some time, it has now been confirmed.  A sub-glacial lake of liguid water, although briny (high salt content) exists under the north pole of the planet. An instrument on the European probe Mars Express, called MARSIS, uses a radar sounder to penetrate the surface of the planet and provide the data needed for analysis. A study of three years worth of collected data from the probe, led by Roberto Orosei of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics , has concluded that a 20km square body of water exists.

NASA has been "following the water" in its exploration of the planet and now they have a target. It's easy to imagine engineers and project managers are already plotting ways to go see what's there. We get a lot of tantalizing news bites regarding the possibility of life on Mars, even if only microbial, but this discovery is a huge step toward finding some.  It's a big deal.