A Job as Complicated and Time-Consuming as only a “Simple Task” can be.

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Location Taken: Ruby Beach, Washington
Time Taken: June 2008

I had a simple task a few days ago. Well, I’m not sure task is the right word for it.

I wanted to play Guild Wars 2. My sister and her boyfriend play, and managed to show off the game well enough for me to want to join in. Main thing that drew me in is the way that they strongly support solo players. I’m a loner in games as well as real life, and don’t care for setting up parties or joining things or even talking to people. In most MMOs, this means I’m locked out of all the high-end content. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, just lets me join in to the big group battles with no talking or inviting or what have you involved. So if I see a big battle going on, I can just hop in, help out, and hop back out easily. It’s nice.

Anyway, that was my task. Play a game.

First step was, of course, buy the game. At least Guild Wars 2 is a one-time-payment game. Unlike a lot of MMOs, you just pay when you buy, and can just keep playing as much or little as you like without having to pay another penny ever. They do have a few things you can pay for with “Gems”, which you can buy with real-world money if you want, but since you can also pay for them with in-game money, I have no problem with the secondary money stream. I’ve played a few free-to-play MMOs in the past where there’s a real-world money only store that gives some really strong items, making it imbalanced between those with spare cash and those without.

…And I’m getting off topic again. They have a digital version available, but I decided to get the physical version. I’m just a bit happier if when I spend $60 on something I can then hold it in my hands. It’s not too logical, but hey…

So I drove to the store, found it fairly easily, and purchased it.

And then, as I was leaving the parking lot, remembered something rather important: my CD drive on my computer was broken.

I regularly clean the dust out of my computer. It helps the computer run better and quieter. But it does mean opening up the computer case. And in order to clean out the front panel of my computer, I have to remove it. Unfortunately, my old CD drive was salvaged from a different computer and the plastic covering on the front of it didn’t fully fit in the space provided. Or more specifically, it fit too well. It was so snug against the front panel that when I pulled the front panel away from the computer body, the CD drive would come with it. Quite awkward all around. And last time I cleaned the computer, I must have twisted the front panel slightly as I was pulling it open. The plastic covering cracked, and a few pieces even fell off of it into the body of the CD drive. I got most of them out. Most. Alas, the ones that were left fell into a spot that prevented the CD tray from either going out all the way or returning back all the way. It was just stuck part way out, and of course, completely useless.

So I made a quick detour on my way home from the video game store over to Best Buy. Now before you crow at me about how inadequate Best Buy is as a computer parts store, I know it already. But it was late enough the small shops were already closed. All best buy had were a small handful of CD writers, which at least can work as players even though I’ve never needed to burn a CD in my life. It bumped up the price, but I found one on clearance that bumped it back down again.

Back home, and I had to shut down my computer and pull out all the cables attached to it. I found a flat spot, made sure to go ground myself on the plumbing to bleed of any excess static electricity, and opened up my computer case. At least I decided to learn my way around computer hardware years ago (I built my current computer, after doing tons and tons of research), so I could do the labor myself. It was rather simple, actually, just unplugging the old one, replacing one cable (the old CD drive used the now obsolete IDE connections, while the new one uses the new SATA standard, but the new drive came with a cable, and there was space for a few more SATA cables on my motherboard), and then plugging in the new drive. Took less than 10 minutes, and probably saved me at least $60 in labor costs compared to hiring someone else to do it.

And then, all I had to do was plug everything back in, make sure the CD drive worked, install the game, and then I could play!

Well, except I also had to make sure I was on the same World as my sister’s characters. Most MMOs have to split their player base up into different Worlds (or shards, or servers, or whatever they’re called), to keep the active population using the maps down to a level their tech can handle. So I got the name of the World I wanted from my sister, opened up the game to join in and – “This World is Full”.

I couldn’t get in.

So it was to the internets to figure out what was up. And I found out that the World was not permanently full, just temporarily full. And if I joined in when it wasn’t full, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting in again. I think it’s just a matter of trying to keep the various Worlds at a certain evenness of popularity, by not letting new players join in to the really popular ones.
Alas, I really wanted to join that specific world, so it was time for the waiting game. I knew it would probably have a “non-peak” time, where the population of people playing dropped below the limit for Full, whether from people having to sleep or going to work or school. I checked back every hour from about 7 pm to midnight, with no luck. So I set my alarm for six in the morning. No luck. After a bit more sleep, I checked again starting at 10am. Finally, at 2 in the afternoon, it dropped from “Full” to “High”!

So I quickly signed in, nearly a full day after buying the game, and made my first (and so far only) character, a female Human Warrior. I’m rather enjoying it, and while I’m still not high enough level to go pester my sister’s characters, well, let’s just say there’s a reason today and yesterday’s posts came in so late…

Oh, and if you’re wondering what in the world this has to do with the picture, the answer is absolutely nothing. I just found it while looking for anything appropriate and thought it funny. Well, funny in that completely serious way, if you know what I mean. If you really want a connection, well, um… Guild Wars 2 has spots where you can swim underwater, and they’re quite monster-infested, so swimming and wading is in fact dangerous?

  

Now I See the Hole Situation!

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Location Taken: Washington state
Time Taken: June 2008

Sometimes it’s really tough to take pictures of really small things. Other times, it’s the big things that get you.

This is a big thing.

Not that you can easily tell. There’s not much in this photo to provide scale. That hole could easily be a few inches tall, or it could be four or five feet tall. It was the latter.

I wouldn’t have been able to fit through it, but someone a bit shorter and a lot skinnier could have done so easily.

If I remember right, this was one of the three giant trees we visited when traveling along the ocean edge of the Olympic peninsula in Washington. All of them were spur-of-the-moment visits. Signs saying “Giant tree, next right” are almost as irresistible for my mom as signs saying “Waterfall, next left”.

I think this one was a cedar. It was at least 15 feet across, with that shaggy half-falling-off bark pattern common to cedars. They’re not tidy trees. I don’t recall it being especially tall, either, just wide.

It was down a winding logging path going through a second-growth forest, most of the trees thin enough that they were probably only 50 years old or so at most. And then there was this one. Judging from this and a few other examples in the area, if the loggers that focused on this area during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s found a truly magnificent tree, they had a pretty good chance of letting it live. And later ones followed this pattern, and then added in the signage and roads so people could see these marvels.

Which lead to us going down said roads, so I guess it worked.

  

They’re Taking Over! Run! (They’re plants, they won’t catch you)

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Location Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: April 2010

My mom’s garden is full of daffodils. Every spring, hordes of thin spiky leaves work their way through the last of the winter snow, growing into a sea of green with the distinctive daffodil flower on top.

They’re edible, you know. Daffodils, that is. I still recall one children’s sermon at my childhood church, when one of our many interim pastors just chomped the head off a mini daffodil decorating the altar. I don’t recall what the point of it was, but still, there’s something about being 9 or so and watching your pastor eat a flower…

Especially since it was one of Mom’s flowers. She’s got a nice collection of mini daffodils (with small leaves and tiny flowers), though none are in this shot. There’s also a mix of different types, some white, most yellow, and some with different petal configurations.

She didn’t start with this many. Just a small handful of bulbs of each type. But bulb flowers grow new extensions to the bulbs, and vast clusters pop up. And to keep them properly tamed, Mom separates the bulbs every few years, replanting some in the old spot, and others in emptier spots in her garden.

I think she’s running out of spaces to put them. Last spring she gave some of the separated bulbs to a friend. So I suppose now she’s infesting another garden with these prolific daffodils…

  

A Sunset on the Road, a Nap calling my Name off the Road…

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Location Taken: on the road in New York
Time Taken: January 2011

One of the things you never think about when planning a road trip is how exhausting day after day of driving will be.

I mean, it’s just sitting around all day, with occasional stops to go look at pretty things or the like, how tough can it be.

Very tough, actually. Especially if it’s an extensive road trip with a deadline and seven hours of driving a day.

Sitting in a car is not that restful. Your body is trapped in a small range of positions, especially if you’re the one driving, and the muscles slowly build up aches from being unable to fully stretch. And the vibration of the car as it runs only encourages them to develop minor aches.

And mentally it’s not too great either. Sure, you’ve got all these great areas you’re stopping, and those are awesome, but there’s a lot of boring land between the interesting spots that you have to cross. And certain parts of the world have a LOT of boring areas. All the major interstates in the Great Plains region go through the simplest areas to put a road, which in that area means flat and farmed for a large part of it. And while farmland can be pretty and interesting, and what’s being farmed switches from crops to large grassy cattle farms as you head further west and the land dries out too much for crops – it still gets boring after the five hundredth farm or cattle field.

You have to go out of your way to find the interesting bits, often, which means you either need a good GPS, have great natural mapping skills (my choice), or get lost on winding country roads a lot.

By the way, the central part of Wyoming, the part skipped by both I-80 and I-90 in favor of some of the most boring land in the country? It’s full of canyons and hot springs and fascinating little towns. Although driving down 90 miles of country highway after dark constantly worrying about an elk appearing out of the darkness on the road ahead gets a little wearing…

Anyway, back to my point. Road trips are exhausting, both physically and mentally. And if you’re like me, you get to pay the bill the day after you get back and all the mental blocks you set up to keep you going for that one last mile to home finally lift.

In other words, ow.

So here, have a lovely sunset. Yes, I know I forgot to post an artwork on Sunday like I planned to, and instead shifted the whole schedule this week ahead a day. So here’s a random Random post to get things back on track.

  

Twin Tunnels

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Location Taken: Olympic National Park, Washington
Time Taken: June 2008

Most times, civil engineers try to route roads along the edge of mountains. Every so often, even these masters of the craft of finding the least hint of flat land to build on are defeated.

That’s when the tunnels get built. Tunnels are expensive, far more than blasting out some rock from the side of a mountain. They’re a complex mix of physics and geology, convincing rock that there isn’t empty space going right through it.

Due to the cost, when tunnels are required, they are as short as possible. Especially for low-traffic roads like most ones that go up mountains. So the tunnels are short. And, due to the way mountains are formed, when one short tunnel is needed, another is all too often needed in the next ridge.

So you get odd scenes like this, with a very short view of the sky and rock before delving underground once again.