Introduction to Starcraft

Starcraft is a fast-paced game of strategy that pits you against online opponents. Well, there’s a single player campaign mode as well, where you can fight against the computer and watch a story unfold, but I’ve pretty much skipped that and gone straight to the real challenge: other Starcraft players.

As you play, you control one of three alien races: Protoss, an ancient technological race; Terrans, the human team; or the Zerg, a bug-like critters that swarm and corrupt the land. Each race has its own set of buildings and units, so although the general gameplay is the same for each player, there are unique strategies and combinations of units that will win for each race. Knowing how to play one doesn’t necessarily mean you can switch over to the other!

Starcraft 2 Overview

Buildings are at the heart of your military encampment.  You’ll start off with a command center, Nexus, or hatchery depending on which race you select.  You’ll also have some worker-type units that can collect resources and build new buildings.  As you gather those mineral and vespene gas resources, you’ll be able to construct the buildings that create new military units, allow you to build upgrades to existing units, or perform special functions on the map like sensor sweeps.

Military units come in many varieties, from the individual infantry to massive flying fortresses and oversized bugs.  Some units fly, and some burrow.  Some can only attack other ground units from close up, and others can fire at flying units from a range.  Each unit’s particular capabilities and strengths is set, so it is important to know their abilities, weaknesses, and adjust your own strategy according to what you see of your enemy’s.

SC2 Combat

Many wars are determined simply by who can build the most units first.  A good opponent will strike early and strike often, and if they’ve collected more resources and built structures more efficiently they will eventually just overwhelm your defenses.  However, that isn’t to say that all combat is won purely by the size of an army!

The terrain also plays a pretty big role in SC2.  Many areas are separated by ramps and differing altitudes.  From up top, you can usually get a better view and better range on units you’re attacking below.  And unless the invader has some troops on top of the cliffs (or a flying unit who can see over them) they won’t even be able to tell what is shooting at them!

Further, some units have natural advantages against others.  The Protoss Immortal has powerful shields that can protect it from Terran units like the Siege Tank or Thor, and it also has specialized guns that rip right through armored enemies.  However, if surrounded by a horde of cheap zerglings, it will have a hard time shooting them all down before those shields collapse.

In many cases, an inability to hit flying units can result in a massive defeat. Some troops like Zerg roaches can deliver a lot of damage to ground-based units, but just a few Void Rays or Wraiths can rain down damage from above.

Unit speed and mobility is another factor that comes in to play here. Mutalisks fly and they fly fast, so it is pretty easy to circumvent a player’s defenses and attack the weak side of their base. By the time your troops come around from the front gate, the mutalisks might have already gone and left nothing but destruction.

Multi-player Ladder

If you’re playing online against other human players, you’ll have to play some ranking matches so Blizzard can determine exactly where to put you on the ranking ladder. From there, you’ll automatically be matched to face up against folks who are roughly in your same range of skill. Of course, sometimes you’ll still get to play against those who are significantly better or worse than you are, but the amount of points won or lost in those matches is also offset a bit to balance out the expectations. Think of it like having a bit of a buffer against a bad run!

Like Chess, on Speed

Starcraft 2 is pretty much the perfect game for those enjoy strategy at high speeds. If you like chess, but wish you had a factory mass-producing pawns for your onslaught, then don’t make the mistake I did and miss out on any more time without this title. I have to give it a solid 4 and a half out of five stars, and my only complaint is that a game can take a little while to get going just to be decided in about a minute or two of actual combat. Other than that, it is well-balanced and I’m still shocked by new strategies and twists that surprise me after playing for nearly two months. As I get better at the game, my ladder ranking automatically adjusts and puts me up against new challenges I’ve never encountered before. And just as soon as I master that, I am introduced to yet another level of competition…

Ok, there is a lot more that could be said about this game, but right now I really just want to get back to playing! See you online at Battle.net!

I won’t lie – there was quite a bit of pain in the transition. My leg muscles were not used to any kind of exertion, and suddenly they were in use for 10 or 12 hours a day. There was a good week of outright burning, and stiffness for another week after that. After the pain comes gain, and I am definitely feeling some muscle growth in the legs. Heck, they’re probably the firmest muscles on my body now!

This muscle growth is translating to a practical advantage too – I can now walk up hill all the way down town without feeling the slightest sting or shortness of breath (yeah, I guess I was pretty out of shape, but in my defense I’ve never really lived next to a hill! Florida really is that flat.)

I think I’ve even lost a little bit of body fat. Standing burns about 40 more calories per hour than sitting, so I’ve watched my gut flatten out without actually going out of my way to change my diet or exercise. Of course, my diet was already pretty good and I really do need to get to that exercise, but this is some great multitasking on that front. Now, instead of just playing video games, I’m playing video games while burning a bit of extra calories and building a bit of muscle.

Then again, you don’t just have to stand still, either! Sometimes a great song will come on and I can’t help but dance a little bit in my own awkward, uncoordinated way.

My feet weren’t so happy at first, either, but I’ve learned to stand a bit more on the wider ball of my foot instead of the heel. A comfortable pair of shoes goes a long way, too.

I’ve got a tall stool for those all-nighters (like tonight!) but it seems a little bit too short to be an ideal seat. If you and your desk are a little shorter than six feet tall, the 29″ stool would probably be a perfect fit. I might need another one but the few I’ve seen in the 33″-36″ range are incredibly expensive.

So, other than being very easy to find, what were the advantages of a traditional sitting desk again? I really can’t remember… but I do cringe a bit when I remember the lower back pain I was starting to feel the first hints of after 29 sedentary years of school and jobs that required sitting at an old-fashioned desk.

By now, the panic and frenzy of yesterday’s campus lockdown at ECU has turned to laughter and jokes about the wild over-reaction to what turned out to be an umbrella.

Here the student can be seen crossing an intersection where the ECU campus and downtown Greenville meet:

And another picture from that intersection, displaying exactly what the focus of attention was:

In addition, Youtube has the actual video footage these pictures were taken from:

And finally, here’s a picture of the police surrounding a bus in downtown Greenville, near the ECU campus. Some witnesses in the area and internet rumors had suggested a gunman had taken hostages aboard public transport. These leads, as well as those pointing to hostage situations inside campus buildings, turned out to be nothing but fabrications crafted of fear.

If there had actually been a threat, there wouldn’t have been much of a chance to escape. Within minutes, police from three jurisdictions had swarmed the area and locked down all movement. Luckily, there was no actual threat this time.

***Apologies to any news outlets who feel their images are being used inappropriately. This website has no monetary purpose or marketing plan. It exists as a digital scrap book I can access from anywhere, and these events are the mile markers by which we remember our lives. If you still have a problem, deal with it.

A tense morning turns to disbelief and groans as officials announced the individual who sparked the lockdown was carrying an umbrella.

Around 10:15 AM on November 16, 2011, police received a call about a man carrying what appeared to be a gun at an intersection between downtown Greenville and the main campus of East Carolina University.

After inspecting local traffic cameras, the police ordered an immediate lockdown of campus, sending students hiding for cover and locking up classrooms. A tense three hours followed with very little official update.

However, speculation on the web ran rampant. The rumors of a gunman on campus turned in to rumors of four gunmen on campus. Someone reported that he was seen getting on a bus and several officers swarmed all of the buses in downtown. As three police helicopters swarmed overhead, the lockdown was expanded to nearby elementary schools and rumors escalated to talk of a hostage situation.

Meanwhile, pictures and reports from students locked up on campus started to leak out as well. At one point this picture was posted to Twitter and people were claiming that the suspect(s) had been caught.

Police officers stop and search ECU students during a lockdown

Around 12:30 PM, the police were apparently listening in on Twitter for information because they began to evacuate and search several buildings named in the online rumors of a hostage situation. After a half hour of playing whack-a-mole with Twitter leads, the search stood down, the lockdown was lifted, and students were sent on their way back home (or to their next class!)

The massive over-reaction to a non-event is emblematic of the mood in our society today. Paranoia runs strong despite the fact that we are relatively safe when compared to historical standards of even just a few decades ago. There isn’t actually more crime, yet we’re bombarded with the worst of the horror stories and thrown in to panic over an umbrella.

Will anyone flinch by the time there actually is a wolf?

Had a great morning, stuck in a classroom for several hours with nothing to do while the campus police, the city police, and the state troopers with assault rifles, helicopters, dogs, shut down the city with swat teams surrounding a house, a small business, and several buses, all searching for a white male with a bookbag and an assault umbrella.

-Eyewitness Account

Unfortunately, you can’t really just go up to the furniture store and pick up a standing desk. There were a few decent desks that might have been convertable, but Aisling decided that the easiest way to create one would be to start from scratch.

I didn’t have a whole lot of demands other than getting the height of the keyboard and monitors right, so about $35 worth of wood, paint, and screws from Lowe’s was enough to get the project rolling.

Now instead of sitting around all day on the internet… I can stand around.

Practical Concerns

In general, it is probably healthier to stand than sit. You’re burning more calories throughout the day, and there’s less pressure on the spine and hip bones.

However, there’s a lot more pressure on the feet. So you’ll need some really comfy mats, or as I’m improvising now a lot of pillows and blankets. The downside to that, of course, is that my dog thinks I’ve made her a new bed next to my feet. Then again, the dog always seems to think that my feet are her bed.

For the first day, I felt a lot of strain in my leg muscles and pain in my feet. I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.

On the second and third days, things got even worse. I was pretty tempted to sit down with my laptop on the kitchen table and give up on the whole experiment.

But on the fourth day I was starting to feel pretty good about it again. Sitting down felt a little… weird… like my legs wanted something constructive to do with themselves.

After a couple weeks, I’m definitely glad to be standing. I’ve still got the laptop for whenever I’m feeling lazy or sick, but for the most part I’m writing and working from an upright position. It is like years of bad posture have started melting away!

Today, I’m going to actually write it all down so I can remember what takes up the time – and how I can be more efficient with what needs to be done.

Monday Morning, 9/19/11

Morning might not be the exact right word because I didn’t roll out of bed until about half past noon.

The house smells like sausages but there’s no sign of Aisling. Her computer hasn’t gone to sleep yet so I must have just missed her. Damn.

First order of business is to start up the coffee. When the beans are ground and the water is poured, I flip the switch and head outside for a cigarette. I haven’t managed to quit, but so far I’ve done pretty good at cutting back on the nicotine so I just smoke half of the thing. (A few months ago I managed to switch from analog cigarettes to electronic ones, but at some point during the move I lost track of all the parts and chargers so I switched back.)

A few minutes later the coffee is done and I settle down to check my emails.

Ah, a letter from Aisling: it seems like she headed to campus early to make copies of our drivers’ licenses for GEICO, sort out some financial aid stuff, and get a head start on her welding for the day. Damn, I did just miss her, but she left me some (gluten-free) pancake batter in the fridge.

Accounting for sleep

Looks like I got another important email too: an affiliate sale notification from Hostgator. When all of the morning’s income is counted, it looks like I made about $60 while I was asleep from 6 am to 12:30 pm. Not a bad payscale for dreaming – especially since most people don’t get paid almost $10 an hour to snore.

Then from about 1 to 1:30, I went through my most popular websites to sort real comments from spam. Guess what? 100% spam this morning. Oh well, real comments are nice but ad clicks and affiliate sales are even better.

The Black Hole

1:30 to 2:30 pm kind of just disappears in to the black hole known as Reddit. This used to be my fix for the hard news of the day, but lately the site has been overrun by a new culture of lulz and irreverence. Looks like the markets are down again today and everyone still hates everyone else in politics. Nothing really changes, so maybe the switch to lulz and irreverence is more useful to me than hard news after all.

Work? I’ll give it a shot

At about 2:30 I’m starting to feel too lazy and unproductive to enjoy myself, so I clock in to my contract job and start checking out the to do list.

Looks like there are about 28 database entries that need a review before going live, and another 161 that I need to update myself. The work load definitely piled up over the last month as my typical 15 hour weeks turned in to about 3 – when I was lucky! It really was a crazy summer, after all. Taking inventory of the work to be done, it looks like the editing might get finished this week but the updates will take a good while to see completion.

“The Grind”

By about 4:30 I passed $100 for the day. Not bad when I’d only been awake for four hours. In that four hours, I also managed to clean a load of laundry, fry up those pancakes, fix an issue with my desktop computer, edit a few entries, make a few phone calls, and respond to a few emails.

Around 5 I get a text message from Aisling. She’s working on a last minute paper and she has ceramics until late but I’m glad to hear from her. It is also my favorite time of day: Now that people start to get off work I can start to think of other things, myself. It has been a tough four and a half hours today, after all!

An Evening Stroll

By six, I was feeling a little restless. I was also running out of cigarettes so I took a quick walk around the block and up to the neighborhood convenience store. Traffic in Greenville near ECU is almost non-existant compared to what I’m used to for this time of day. Things get a little congested to the south of us, but the college corner of town is pretty sleepy between early afternoon and until the sun goes down.

After stopping to chat a bit with the neighbor, I came back in to make a second pot of coffee and check out any web developments that might have happened in the short half hour I was walking. Surprise surprise, I made another big hosting sale in that time frame and my daily income had just passed $240. Definitely not bad for what amounts to four hours of actual work (and I absolutely count laundry and cooking as work!)

At this point, I haven’t gotten any texts or calls from the usual suspects, so I feed Caoimhe (our dog) and take her out for the second leg of the walk. I tried to run a little bit, but Caoimhe wouldn’t have anything to do with that.

Recovery and Conquests

Now for the fun part: by the time we came in from walking around 8, there’s a message from Josh about wanting to play a game of Civilization. We fire up Civ 4 – the Colonization version – and race to revolution.

And not long after, Aisling came home from class. We sat down to watch some Star Trek while I worked on dinner and took turns in our Civ game. On the menu: chuck eye steaks, lima (butter) beans, and some steak fries.

Around 1, we saved up the game and Aisling headed to bed. I came back to finish up this post and count my final earnings for the day. As of 1:30 am, I’m up to about $260. Very excellent considering there were only about four and a half hours of anything that could be considered “work” in the day. Now at about 2 am, I’m starting to think of some sleep myself.

Not bad at all for a boring Monday. These are the tough days, after all!

And indeed, it is the summer months that provide no shortage of things to be done, new beginnings, and terrible calamity.

A Nervous Excitement

Shortly after the UNF iron pour, the summer started in a big way with a life-altering decision.  Aisling was accepted to a few graduate programs for sculpture, and after a bit of travel all along the east coast we decided on a school we could both appreciate.  She committed to attend East Carolina University for her MFA and I committed to living in a strange and tiny town.  Not only would it be her chance to take her life’s work to the highest academic level, it would be my excuse to finally get out of Jacksonville, FL.  Greenville North Carolina isn’t exactly the kind of place I imagined leaving for, but there was something peaceful and calming about this tiny college town.

For a while, the excitement of a new adventure was bliss, but as summer arrives so do the storms – and in this case, the storms were actually more literal than figurative.

In June, a powerful storm ripped through Jacksonville, and several downdraft tornadoes were reported in our neighborhood.  While the house was spared any damage, the yard was devastated.

At least no one was hurt, but it certainly began a hot and hectic summer. The next few weeks were crammed with chopping wood, calculus exams, summer camps, and packing. Unfortunately, the brief but intense storms didn’t do much to put out the fires that had swept across the region. A heavy black smoke sat over Jacksonville on the hot, drier days, and I was definitely ready to get away.

And a Vacation?

Perhaps unintentionally, I met this chaos with some more of my own. I thought a day trip to St Augustine would be better as a weekend escape, so I began planning it out. By that Saturday night in August, I had surprised Aisling with a claddagh ring and a proposal of marriage. She said yes! (And no, we don’t have a date for the wedding)

To Greenville

And no, not the Greenville you’ve heard of in South Carolina. This is the smaller one surrounded by even smaller towns.

We filled a U-haul truck with as much as we could take, and hit the road in the last half of August. The trip itself was exhausting but relatively uneventful. It was the first major move of my life since age 4, so there were definitely some strong emotions and worry attached, but I’m mostly glad to open a new chapter in this adventure of life.

Another interesting phenomenon was even there to welcome our arrival: we felt the shocks from a rare mid-Atlantic earthquake. Again, we were lucky that no one or no thing was hurt, but it was definitely a first for Aisling and I.

The next storm

One thing I feared I’d miss from Jacksonville was the storms – but North Carolina has not dissapointed in the least. Less than two weeks after pulling in to town, Hurricane Irene decided to pay us a visit.

The storm didn’t seem so bad on its own, but it managed to take down so many trees that we were left without power for about three and a half days. Luckily, the new house has a gas powered stove and water heater so we still had hot food and hot showers, but half a week without electricity is still quite the recipe for boredom and restlessness.

Back to Florida

You’d think the engagement, moving across three states, a hurricane, tornadoes, an earthquake, and fires would be enough excitement for the summer, but our work wasn’t done.

On September 3rd, 2011 my cousin Donald Lee got married in Tampa at the city aquarium. It was a beautiful ceremony and there was quite a view while waiting for and during the event:

Unfortunately, we didn’t have long to hang out in Tampa before we had to drive back though Jacksonville to pick up the remainder of our stuff. With two more small trucks packed up with pieces of art, supplies, and the last of our furniture, we made the final uneventful trip back up to Greenville, NC.

By now the weather has started to turn colder and the crazy pace of the summer has slowed down just a bit: Aisling is back to classes and I seem to have found a few moments to write.

Unholy mistruths and half-lies,
unearthed by bone-cracking misconceptions.

Purple steel churns, under crushing
eternal gravity. Hammer-weakened,
tempered in eternity’s forge

and crashing against dimmer,
weaker realities.

Vintage

It stands majestic in temperate woods and rolling fields.

Stone is cold, cracked, chipped, and battered.

Here stands the oldest monument – glorious triumph of science and war!

A column aged and lifeless, technological memorial to genocide and death. Memorial of a most primitive – but not wholly dead generation….

Nova

Here spins worlds
encased in diamond shells

shot and spinning – grows life!

Among even darkness,
and frozen possibility.

Bold now! Unknown!
Venture forth, dare we?

Into the growing darkness -
growing stronger daily…

Drowning,
growing over life,
synthesized disease
patched in to factions.

Choking
health, soiling
that which was once
its own life – dry yet alive.

Creation,
(the) melting (of) two
minds in to one
as is/has/will (ever) be
defined.

Possibility
of infinite new futures —

clawing,
drowning,
suffocating,
that cracked, dried,
dying sort of
“life.”

First up, Professor Lance Vickery guides students in installing the air blower for the cupola furnace – then finds and demonstrates where the hot part is.

Off to the side, the students’ molds sit in preparation for the iron to heat up.

Now the furnace is starting to really heat up:

To keep the temperature up, coke is added to the fire. This isn’t Charlie Sheen’s kind though, this is a distillate of coal that serves both as a fuel and as a reducing agent that will help to separate the oxidization and other impurities from the scrap iron.

This next video shows the actual tapping of the furnace and pouring of the iron. Molten metal cascades out to the pre-heated ladel, and two students carry it off to have the final impurities skimmed out. Once only the pure iron is left, they then walk off to pour this liquid iron in to the waiting molds the students have prepared.

And here they finish up the ladle’s worth of iron and pour the remainder back in to the furnace to stay fresh for the next round.

More iron and coke is added in to the furnace to prepare for the next batch of molds to be poured.

Students on fire duty stand ready with sand to put out any flames that get out of control.

In this video, I’ve got a slightly different perspective for the entire process, from tapping the furnace and skimming impurities, to filling the molds and managing the resulting flames:

In the last video, molten iron bursts through several ceramic shell molds. After several late-minute changes, the longer & thinner ceramic molds can’t manage to hold the 2800 degree iron without cracking and bursting at the weak points. Still, one of them worked perfectly and one of the others might still be somewhat salvageable in a modified form:

Group Photos and Aftermath

When the final molds were full and the furnace started winding down, the students and professors all gather around for a few group photos:

Now the fun part, cracking open the molds like it was Christmas morning:

And finally, smashing the last few molds and preparing for cleanup. Quite a mess compared to the orderly set up of molds when things got started!

A long history

And I’ve been smoking for a long time. Around 12 or 13, a friend’s sister offered me a dollar if I could snag a smoke from my mom and deliver it to her. Except, when I did provide the cigarette and collected my dollar, she didn’t actually want to smoke it so her brother and I split it.

It was pretty good.

I’ve always had a bit of anxiety lingering in my mind, and with Celiac Disease there was a constant unease in my stomach that tobacco seemed to calm better than anything else I’d tried.  So while we weren’t of the legal age to acquire more smokes, that didn’t stop us from slipping them in to pockets when no one was looking, or asking the homeless vets who hung out by the gas station to pop in and buy us a pack.

So school would let out, and we’d all congregate behind the convenient store and wait patiently for someone who was willing to indulge or nicotine fix.  The regular price for a pack of smokes included a quart for the buyer, so we got our cigs and they got some beer.

Everyone was happy.

Except that shit will kill you…

But that just isn’t something you worry about when you’re 13 years old and picking up a horrible addiction.  Youth makes us feel immortal, and it is only 10 or 15 years later that one really starts to feel the consequences of such a vice.  It wasn’t just the congestion, but a soreness and stiffness around the sinuses, throat, and mouth. It wasn’t just my own desire to be healthy, like the impulse that has led me to watch my diet and exercise regularly, but also the constant pressure from friends, family, and other loved ones who couldn’t stand to see me hurting myself for the sake of a quick and cheap buzz.

And the odds (for quitting) are stacked against

But even when I realized I wanted to quit, that wasn’t good enough.  I’ve tried several times before – both cold turkey and with nicotine patches.   A single day without cigarettes was pure torture, no matter how much exercise, food, or how many patches I tried to put in their place.  It seems like I wasn’t alone in that hopeless feeling, because the research suggests a slim 3% of people who attempt to go cold turkey manage to go an entire year without more cigarettes.  Even with nicotine replacement therapies, the success rate only tops out around 15%.

Enter the electronic cigarette

Sliding under the regulatory scene is the electronic cigarette.  These portable vaporizers atomize a nicotine solution in to a gaseous fog.  They’re shaped like cigarettes and activated by sucking on the end so everything about the process mimics smoking while strictly controlling what is actually inhaled – mostly pure nicotine minus most of the secondary compounds of burning plant matter.

Of course, the nicotine itself isn’t exactly good for you.  It can increase heart rate, and some nicotine derivatives of the chemical are found in the tumors of smokers who eventually succumb to cancer.

But not all of the health consequences of smoking are directly tied to the inhalation of nicotine itself.  There hasn’t been a whole lot of scientific research in to this particular phenomenon, but the little bit I could find was quite interesting:

The rats breathed in a chamber with nicotine at a concentration giving twice the plasma concentration found in heavy smokers. Nicotine was given for 20 h a day, five days a week during a two-year period. We could not find any increase in mortality, in atherosclerosis or frequency of tumors in these rats compared with controls. Particularly, there was no microscopic or macroscopic lung tumors nor any increase in pulmonary neuroendocrine cells. Throughout the study, however, the body weight of the nicotine exposed rats was reduced as compared with controls. In conclusion, our study does not indicate any harmful effect of nicotine when given in its pure form by inhalation.

Does that mean electronic cigarettes, or smokeless nicotine devices are harmless? Well, probably not, unless you’re directly comparing them to cigarettes which are known to be horrible for your health without any room left for debate. They’re just bad for ya, even if they make ya feel good!

So, for the last four days and some change, I’ve been puffing on a cheap disposable electronic cigarette. It definitely isn’t the same, and even though I’ve kept nicotine running through the blood there has been some brutal feelings of withdrawal. For the first day or two, every action and thought I had was followed up by the idea that “Oh, I should have a cigarette!”

Even right now, I keep thinking about how nice and warm it would feel in the lungs to light up a fresh smoke. Every time the e-cig needs to go down for charging, or after finishing a meal or a glass of rum, I have a hard time getting past that craving.

I’ve acted like a jerk, and thrown little tantrums at my girlfriend like I was some kind of child. She’s had a tough week of her own, and instead of being there to support her I’ve been like this needy & clingy bundle of shaking nerves.

But it is so worth it…

The first benefit of not smoking was the clearing up of sinus pressure. I’ve always had stuffy sinuses, but after just a day of not smoking I started to feel them clear up for the first time in a long time. At two days, I took a walk after it rained and was amazed at how fresh and vital the world smelled. From the wet dirt to the blooming spring flowers, I was amazed at the distinction and potency of these fragrances. Of course, the best smell of all is walking in to my own house without the stale smoke stench, or not tasting the alkaline film in my mouth all day.

Excited and looking forward

Primarily, the electronic cigarette has helped me break the quitting process down in to more manageable parts.  On the first few days, I broke from the secondary chemicals in the smoke, and the feeling of deeply inhaling a burning substance.  Even with the nicotine flowing, things weren’t the same.

After two or three days, that particular feeling started to pass.  It so happens that the cheap e-cig I bought also started to lose its ability to keep a charge, and it doesn’t refill very well.  So the third and fourth day have involved a gradual stepping down in that availability of nicotine, but I think I’m largely past the intense desires I first felt.

All in all, this is by far the longest I’ve gone without a smoke, and I think it is starting to get just a little easier with every additional hour that ticks by.  The withdrawal is bad, and I haven’t even faced the worst part yet, but the benefits of not inhaling a burnt plant are starting to become apparent and my desire to go back to the hacking and coughing have faded pretty fast.

I hope I won’t spend the next fifteen years puffing on an electronic cigarette, but for now, I feel like I’ve accomplished one of those goals that seemed so extreme as to be out of reach.  

Good luck to everyone else out there who is trying to quit – it might take a few tries and a lot of different methods to accomplish it, but it is really worth it when you can finally pull it off!

And looking down…

What might have been the most impressive thing about this flight was that I actually had enough room for my knees and legs. My nerves can’t quite get used to the idea of flying around at 500 to 700 miles per hour at five miles above the ground (or sea), but at least I wasn’t in physical pain for once. Chalk that one up as a bonus for flying with Delta. They might be a bit more expensive, but they’ve got a reassuring safety record and more room than a lot of the alternatives.

Still though, it doesn’t seem like you can get away from the nickel and dime approach to air travel amenities. I was a bit let down when I realized the on-board WiFi cost $9.95 per flight. Not a great deal when the longest leg of the trip from Jax to Philly is 90 minutes. Alcohol, headphones, and even your first checked bag all add in to the costs above the ticket.

Who cares though? They’re still cheap compared to the drinks you get at the airport bars!

It was dark, but Marc knew the security eyes would record the every detail of his movements anyway. For a moment, he wished the soft hum of a hundred miniature cooling fans would cease – but that thought led to the abyss he could not imagine or stand to face. Mumbling, he broke the hum with a terrified thought: “Without our systems, there would be chaos.”

Admitting that fear didn’t help settle his unease. There was still something wrong, something that couldn’t be explained. A few more strained minutes passed before the netscreen blasted itself to life with the familiar nightly news.

“We have achieved great things! We stride boldly toward the future in the 22nd century!”

A thousand images span the screen of new towers, new engines, new computers and other various monuments to the human mind. The booming voice continued:

“Hello citizens of earth. This is truly a great day to be alive. Our hard work and sacrifice ensures the greatness of our mighty civilization. All opposition has been rightly defeated. As long as we all take our jobs and responsibilities seriously, there shall never again be a great crisis like the one our ancestors had endured.”

Marc shuddered again and sub-consciously scratched at the humming sound that was coming from inside his ear.

“We know you are taking great care to fulfill these responsibilities. We are watching, and we are very proud of all that you do.”

The screen went dark again, and the hum changed to a deeper pitch. Marc heard a click and suddenly all doubt was replaced with warm sensation of belonging and acceptance. He got up and stumbled the few feet from his couch to his bed.

“Good night, Marc. I will wake you up again tomorrow in time for work…”

This injured little would-be killer found his way in to our bathroom last week, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to grab my camera and get up close.

Fortunately for me, he didn’t have the strength to attack. In fact, he hardly had the strength to untangle himself from a stray hair in the corner behind the trash can. Unfortunately for the wasp, he wasn’t going to get out of there without some kind of help.

A strange thought entered my mind: Wasps always get a bad reputation, but for all the close encounters I’ve had none of them had ever actually tried to hurt me, personally. Instead of feeling like I needed revenge against a violent intruder, I started thinking like I had an injured & lost guest in my house.

What I did next was probably the height of insanity, but I decided to give the guy a lift on to an alumni magazine & cap him off with a big plastic cup. From there, I managed to bring him outside, where he curled up in a paralytic coma for a while before slowly walking away.

Fly away now, little dude!

That was the last I saw of him, and it probably wasn’t too long before the ants & other bugs exploited his vulnerability. I was still glad to give him a chance – or at the very least, I was glad to have him out of the house without anyone getting hurt.

I recently purchased a Roku box myself, and now that I’ve been using that instead of traditional cable for about a month, all I can say is that it is like getting paid $50 a month to improve my TV experience.

Cost and Benefit

So instead of paying $60 every month to Comcast for their declining selection of programs, I’m paying about $10 to Netflix so I can watch exactly what I want, when I want, without any kind of commercial interruptions.

Of course, in addition to Netflix there are a whole bunch of choices available. Hulu has a premium set-top service, and you can also access popular video sites like Youtube, Funny or Die, and CNN video. Still not enough? Amazon Video on Demand has all sorts of high definition new releases available for just a few bucks each. Instead of paying a huge monthly bill to the cable company, you can actually decide what is worth spending money on and what you can skip right over.

It turns out the Wii also plays Netflix and Youtube, so for two TVs we only had to shell out cash for the Roku box and a wireless router. All counted, the transition cost $200 up front and will start to save money after four months of skipping cable payments.

Beyond DVD

Now, one of my favorite features of the Roku box, and a big advantage it has over the Wii, is that you can plug a USB drive right in to the device and watch MP4 videos. Since these USB drives can hold more gigs than a blu-ray disc, I feel like I’m starting to see the end of the DVD era. Now the few DVDs I do have are being stored up on hard drives and converted for USB viewing. Who needs a boxed set of multiple discs per season when you can put a dozen seasons on one thumb-sized flash drive? Also, you can save up your favorite internet videos to make a custom play list or even to have some back up in case the web goes down for a while. Now, the Wii is theoretically capable of playing USB movies as well, but you’ll have to make some modifications to the software and there’s more risks & effort involved.

Upgrade the smart way

So if you’re thinking about making the switch from cable to internet TV, now is a great time to start researching and making plans. You probably don’t want to rush in because there are a lot of little details to pay attention to, but with the proper planning and analysis of your existing devices and televisions, you can probably maximize your TV entertainment at a really great price.