Sometimes Wry is Funny

We play games to have fun. We play them to socialize, to recreate, to learn, and so on.

I’ve written before about playing the Lord of the Rings Online. One of my favorite features of the game is the interactive nature of many of the non-player elements. In any Role-playing Game, you interact with other people playing characters. But you also interact with Non-player characters (NPCs) who sell you stuff, give quests, comment on your progress. There are quests that ask you to broker peace between people who have been enemies in the past due to old enmities. If you succeed, then in the future when you walk by either NPC, they call out to you, thanking you for your help in bringing a feud to a happy ending.

Another player aid in LotRO are certain reminders or hints that you have completed some portion of a quest. I like the pseudo-interactive nature of these things, they help me to remain aware of what I am doing. As you perform tasks, text will appear telling you when you’ve completed a step. It fades into view, to keep you informed of your progress.

"FOUND ONE OF BILBO’S BUTTONS IN GOBLINTOWN"
"COLLECT ANGMARIM WEAPONS (3/15)"

Stuff like that.

One of my favorite interactions sort of breaks the 4th wall, acknowledging the text’s interaction with you, the player, the audience. Commenting on what’s happening, as it were.

While adventuring in the frozen northern lands of Forochel (That’s Northwest of Angmar for you kids tracking this on your own Third Age Map of Middle Earth, an area referenced mostly in the appendices of the books), you encounter a fellowship that is scattered. Hapless even. Every member of this non-player group has lost stuff critical to the performance of their particular class, and needs your help finding it.

You retrieve a lore-master’s pet raven, slaying wargs to keep the bird safe while escorting it from hostile territory.

You find the lost sword of a guardian (it’s not really that nice a sword, but it has familial value as it once was used by the NPC’s sister).

The best one is a quest to help the minstrel. First, you retrieve three lost sheets of music (the quest is called Three Sheets to the Wind. Get it? Hilarious!). Then, you help the poor musician re-tool his lute. He has heard a rumor about a special saber-tooth cat stalking the wintry wilderness; he really believes some catgut from that fierce beast will be the thing that could put his lute-playing over the top.

You have to battle your way to the top of an island in the middle of a chilly river, then fight an especially hard-to-kill saber-tooth. Finally, you are victorious! You loot the corpse, looking for the item.



Got it! The acknowledgement words fade, and you are greeted by another message. In a game where you have collected 100s of hides, weapons, scales, nails, pieces of meat, and other sundry items, a strand of feline intestine finally provokes an editorial comment from the game.



Comedy gold!

Looks Can Deceive

Look close; is that a happy face or a sad one?



Sam ran ahead of us down a steep grassy hill towards a pavilion where we were convening for an Elders Quorum picnic. His feet got ahead of him and he tumbled to the bottom.

Laughing hysterically.

Tomato Roulette

Jenni made a genius purchase of a dozen tomato plants this summer. We didn't really pay attention to the breeds, and now have a jungle of tomato plants. What tomato breed matures to an orange color? The one on the right is really sweet, but a weird marbled red and orange.

Any advice on how to prevent the weird scabrous green stuff from forming on the top like on the center tomato?

Or how to keep the tomato from splitting like the one on the left?

It's been a fun tomato summer!

The Things We Do for Our Family

I would do pretty much anything (given the rational boundaries of the law, factual reality, and moral propriety) to take care of my family. I’ve built, welded, constructed, censused, taught, janitored, lawyered, clerked, written, advocated, hauled, tested, surveyed, taxied, guarded . . . I’ve done just about everything I could find to do. One of the most interesting things I’ve done is my remunerated work as a volunteer for the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center. I’ve been through trials of both Ebola and Bird Flu (which, besides making a fair bit of change, means I’m also now immune to them; bring on the pandemic!).

It’s been about 18 months since the last Ebola appointment. I check in every so often to see if they have another trial. We could use the extra funds. I mean, we can always use the extra funds, but with two in college and one on a mission, at this point, we could REALLY use them. A few weeks ago, finally, another vaccine trial is open; a Malaria vaccine! Who wouldn’t want to be immune (just in case I’m ever needing to travel to the tropics)?!

So the Malaria vaccine is different from the other two vaccine studies I’ve participated in. The Ebola and Bird Flu trials were both DNA vaccines, this one will be using irradiated sporozoites. Malaria isn’t the same kind of disease, where an immunological response to a virus can be generated by exposing a body to the virus’ DNA. Malaria is caused by a parasite (the sporozoite) invading a host body and then doing damage to the host’s blood. It kills about 1 million people a year.

The thing about vaccines that use a piece of the bad thing (like the DNA) versus vaccines that use the whole bad thing (like the attenuated virus of an MMR vaccine, or an irradiated sporozoite in my vaccine) is this; you can maybe GET the disease from a vaccine that uses the whole bad thing. So I there’s a small but statistically significant chance the vaccine itself could give me Malaria.

But probably not.

The trial will pay a lot of money. Like, more than 10% what my annual salary is at MES. And even with it speculative, ALL of it is spent already.

So. I’ll get six rounds of vaccine, and lots of follow up blood work and vaccination-site assessment, starting in early December. The really big weird deal comes next July. On July 11th I will be participating in what the Vaccine Research Center calls the “Malaria Challenge”. I’ll get bit/stung by a number (either 5 or 6, I can’t remember) of mosquitoes. Not just regular mosquitoes; super crazy non-native mosquitoes carrying Malaria sporozoites.


They’re going to give me Malaria. That’s . . . a 100% chance of getting it.

Now, Malaria is really bad. But it’s not contagious the way the flu or smallpox is. There is a specific breed of mosquito that carries it from person to person, and those mosquitoes don’t live in the United States. If/when I get it, you’ll be safe shaking my hand or eating dinner with me. Seriously, they like keep the mosquitoes in a special climate-controlled insect office for ridiculously dangerous and lethal insects or something, it’s not like they might get out and wreak . . . actually, that is sort of a realistic scenario. So much so that I am sure that the powers in charge of this process make REAL certain that their nasty mosquitoes will only ever get to feed on willing volunteers.

Well-paid volunteers that is.

So. If the vaccine really works, I won’t contract malaria. If it works like they seem to think it will work, there will be a lower incidence of malaria infection (so I might only have a 1 in 5 chance of contracting). Either way, if I get it, they’ll treat it. Malaria is completely treatable. But that’s how the disclosure is worded; “when” I get it, they’ll treat it.

*shrug* We live in a mortal world. I might as well get paid for it.

John Landbecks In the News

Not me, but somebody with my name, got quoted in an AP story about preparations for Hurricane Irene. Dad chatted up the guy in the house next to where we were loading his boat onto the trailer.

Go Dad!

Happy Mistakes

Stewart asked us to send pictures of him to use on his blog. I volunteered to do it.

I thought I was all Wile E. Coyote, super-genius (without the irony) when I used Picasa to find all the pictures with his face in them, and then copy them to a folder.

Oops.

Except it didn't copy them, it MOVED them.

Do you know how many pictures you've taken of your children that are named the exact same thing? There are seriously 14 pictures named "pict0001" with Stewart in them.

Ok, no problem. I can sort them by date and then move them back into their parent folders. No one will ever know.

Oops.

Except everytime the camera's battery died, it reset the date to 1/1/2002. These three pictures are all dated from that date.





Hey wait a minute, the second and third photos have Stewart wearing the same shirt. They are from the SAME FOLDER!



So I'm slowly working my through the list. Searching the photo folder for pictures with names that are one number off (so when searching for the folder containing "pict0001" I'll look for all the photos named "pict0002" and compare). The ones that are dated correctly is much easier, I'm filing them away with amazing speed.

Not really that speedy, though, I keep getting caught in eddy currents of nostalgia. At this rate, I estimate I will be done about a week before Stewart returns home from his mission. It's fun to stroll down memory lane. Though it's disconcerting to do it completely absent certain contextual clues of time and location.

It's uncomfortably like having Alzheimers.

50 pictures down. Only . . . 1022 to go.

Turtles!

I work for a quasi-state agency charged with making the world a better place. We do environmental things. Most of them are pretty mundane, like recycling old tires or treating wastewater.

But a small segment of what we do is really cool. A few days ago, the baby terrapins hatched!



Each of those little cuties is about the size of a quarter. We hatch them from eggs, and then turn them over to elementary school classes to raise. When they get bigger, we release them onto one of the islands we are building in the Chesapeake.

Here are some older turtles, frolicking in a container while someone cleans their aquarium.