Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Updates, updates, and more updates

First update, of course, is this entry. Because I haven't posted anything in the past half-decade or so, whatever I said here today would be a update. So, news items:

Yes, I'm still alive.

Second update, yes, I'm still working on a sequel to Gifts. In fact, I'm planning to have a series of four books when I'm done. Talents is the sequel to Gifts, to be followed eventually by two more books, Skills and Mastery. If I'm being honest with myself, the sequel has given me fits because the series follows a different line than the first book. Gifts was a book about the effects of a single magic spell on four diverse men and the people in their lives. My goal with the sequels was to tell the story of the magic. Of course, to some extent that means introducing new people and taking a lot of emphasis off the main characters from Gifts. I've had a hard time giving them up, though.

Third update: in the middle of this month, the Mrs and I will be attending the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Houston, TX, learning to be Social Justice Warriors and to combat the voices of evil and ignorance (*Cough* Donald Trump *Cough*). Holy crap.

Finally, fourth update. The update update. See, for he past week or so, I've been caught up in the same stupid gaming craze as the rest of the country. My stepdaughter started playing Pokémon Go, so of course, that meant the Mrs had to try. After hearing about the game for a few days, I got interested (okay, I was feeling left out and wanted to do whatever she's doing) and downloaded the game. Damn, that is some kind of seriously addictive shit. I don't know how long I'd been playing—might have been a couple of weeks, might have been just a few days—but I had walked many miles and amassed a decent collection of little cartoon monsters. I was already evolving critters and beginning to strategize my next evolutions and power increases. I had an egg in an incubator that was just about to hatch. Then I downloaded the latest update.

I installed update 1.1.1, which I DO NOT RECOMMEND for anyone interested in continuing that game. It wiped out my ninth level character. All my data were overwritten. If I wanted to continue playing, I had to start over at level 1, with absolutely nothing. I was absolutely gob-smacked. I know: it's just a game. Just a silly video game. All my accomplishments within the game are imaginary. Still, losing all of that work really hurt—I felt like I'd been gut-punched—HARD.

Well, I've started playing again. I'm not putting as much effort in any more. I don't know that I'll ever amass as many critters or get back to that excited place where I'm strategizing future game-play, but I've started. We'll see.

Meanwhile, if I ever meet anyone from Niantics, if YOU work for Niantics and introduce yourself to me, cover your face and be prepared to duck. I say that because, if I still feel like I'm feeling now, somebody's probably going to get smacked in the face.

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