Category: Revelation

Another boring medical renewal

And that’s the way I like them. My post from last time (Rants and Revelations » It’s so nice to renew your medical…) has all the links that explain why a boring medical renewal is the best kind.

I’ve been kind of dreading this for two reasons:

  • The doctor I go to usually spends the entire time making really stupid jokes about Hillary Clinton
  • And at no pattern I can discern, sometimes the exam includes a prostate check and sometimes it doesn’t.

This time, no Clinton jokes, no prostate exam. I had a lot more trouble than before on some parts of the eye test, particularly the one with these diamond shapes that you have to tell which corner has the checkerboard. When it came to the left eye ones, I had to unfocus my eyes and refocus them before I could even see a checkerboard on #1. I got to #10 on the others, but only #6 on those ones.

But I’m legal for another two years. Woo hoo.

Another MMORPG question

How legitimate is it to “game the system”? If you exploit flaws in the AI, is that cheating or just making the best of the situation? Two instances from last night:

  1. I was attacked by two enemies, and they kicked my ass. When I came back, I discovered that if I shot one with a distance weapon where there was a fence between me and the other guy, the one I hit ran up and attacked me but the other stayed behind the fence. This enabled me to kill them one at a time which was way easier.
  2. A “boss character” of a minor quest came up and attacked me while I was busy attacking his lackey. He kicked my ass. When I came back, his AI was acting weird – I’d shoot an arrow at him, and he’d run half the distance between us and then run back to where he was. I’d shoot another arrow, and he did the same thing. I got 3 or 4 good hits in that way before finally closing with him and defeating him in hand-to-hand.

Question for the MMORPG players out there

I’m participating in a beta for a new MMORPG, which one I probably can’t say because of the NDA that I clicked to agree to without reading very carefully. I’ve never played an MMORPG before and I can really see the appeal – far better for us old farts than the fast twitch first person shooters that I used to play.

I’m playing a “hunter” class, and the hints say to stand back and fire distance weapons rather than getting involved in the hand-to-hand, but I’m also in the initial quests that are very small and don’t make much sense to do in a group. So I spot an enemy, fire an arrow or maybe two, and the enemy comes over and starts hand-to-hand, so I respond in kind. That’s fine and dandy, since so far I’ve had not much trouble with the hand-to-hand either. But on one of the quests I found myself in a very target poor environment with dozens of players running around trying to find enemies to defeat and every enemy already engaged in some battle or other. I basically had to spawn-camp. While waiting for an enemy to spawn, I’d see other players fighting enemies nearby. In order to experience that “hunter” life-style, I’d fire some arrows at the enemy they were fighting to give them some help. Is giving this sort of help a good thing or a bad thing? I’m pretty sure the game system will give the kill to them and not me. But I don’t know if I get XP for the kill or not, and if so would the other players think I’m stealing from them?

Short paddle

I put in at Browncroft, and paddled upstream. The stream was running pretty fast because of recent rains. Unlike last weekend, when there was only one place where I had to sprint my hardest to get through some fast water, this week there were three places like that. Because of that, I only managed to make it upstream for 35 minutes before I pooped out. And it only took me 15 minutes to get back down. But on the plus side, the high water meant there was no place where the kayak bottomed out and got stuck like last weekend.

First Annual Rochester Pilots Picnic

Hey, that was a big success. It was supposed to start at Noon, and I arrived at 12:15. There was nobody there yet, and I was walking over towards the river to have a look around, and seriously considering whether to declare the thing a big bust and head home, when up comes Brad Salai and Jim Hood with all the food. Hey, even if nobody else shows up, at least we can eat and drink. But over the next little while, people started showing up. By the time the charcoal was ready, we probably had 25 people there. It seems there were a bunch of people from Artisan Flying Club, 3 or 4 other people from Rochester Flying Club (RFC), and at least three former members of RFC.

Mostly we just sat around eating and drinking and talking about flying. What more does any group of pilots need to do? At around 3pm, a Red Bull truck pulled up and handed out cans of Red Bull energy drink. (They’d evidently contacted Brad Salai to ask if they could come.) Just for the record, the sugar free type of the drink doesn’t taste very good. I don’t think I was alone in that assessment – there were a lot of mostly full cans sitting around as we packed up at the end.

I’d say the event was a success, and I hope we decide to do the Second Annual Rochester Pilots Picnic. One comment I heard was that we should get the Rochester Pilots Association RPA back together. RPA sort of went on hiatus for many years because the guy running it lost interest in running it. But then Paul Pakusch decided we needed to get it back together, but when we started having meetings only 4 or 5 people showed up for each meeting, so he disbanded it. I think the Assocation assets were disposed according to the charter, which probably means it went to an aviation related charity. But maybe we went about it the wrong way – instead of having a bunch of boring business meetings, maybe we need to have picnics and other fun things, and then see if we have concerns that need a business meeting. After all, the Rochester area isn’t just Greater Rochester International Airport – there are a bunch of airports in the area, and a bunch of different groups of pilots who should all get together and talk flying.