pokemon go

Garden Guardian

Yesterday was an interesting day for a bunch of reasons… not the least of which was the massive gale force storm that blew through downtown Tulsa.  Over lunch yesterday I decided to go for a walk in Woodward Park in a vague attempt to catch some new Pokemon.  Unfortunately the entire time I was there it seemed as though the servers were acting up horribly.  The park is littered with a dozen or so stops, and most of them were not loading for me when I attempted to spin them.  So I roamed around a bit in the 94 degree heat and humidity and finally wound my way around to the Linneaus garden where I met the adorable cat above.  I am guessing it belongs to someone in the neighborhood behind the park because it is very much obviously a pet… and obviously one that has been tagged to roam freely.  This is also where I encountered what I believe were my first geohackers.  Pokemon Go has had a few unofficial releases as folks have modded it like the somewhat humorously named Pokemon Go Anywhere that lets you click to move.  This is obviously a one way trip to ban city because it will be relatively trivial for Niantic to determine these folks are running an unofficial release of the game.

However there is a whole other batch of folks that have installed fake gps tools on their rooted android phones, that allow them to essentially teleport to anywhere in the world.  This is the sort of behavior I think I was experiencing yesterday at lunch.  The Linnaeus Garden is a Poke Gym and is out of range of any of the nearby parking lots and streets.  As a result the only real way to go over there and check on it is to get out of your car and walk up to the path leading into it.  While I was there it was just me and this cat, and no one else within range of the Pokestop.  When I rolled up on it the stop was Blue so I opted to plop down in a bench and do some battling to increase its prestige levels.  The adorable cat came up and was friendly and I managed to add a few hundred prestige points before I got bored and wandered off.  As I was walking out of the garden area, the gym flipped from Blue level 3 to Red level 3 instantly… still zero people around.  So either someone was registering legitimately wrong on the GPS, or someone was actually geohacking to take over the gym.  This makes me wonder just how many gyms are being flipped by folks cheating like this?

After this incident I made my way to the car and was just about to leave the park, when I gave the app one last check.  While I had really found nothing of interest the entire time in the park, suddenly there was a Bulbasaur within a single footprint away from my vehicle.  So I hopped back out of the car, locked it and began the search.  There are lots of supposed methods to make tracking down a Pokemon easier, but I largely just wander around aimlessly until I find it.  Within a few minutes of going the wrong direction I finally doubled back and found it rather quickly.  After that it was a lot of wasted Pokeballs before I managed to catch the orange border critter and make the trip to the park not a complete failure.  I grabbed lunch really quickly and headed back to the office where I was greeted with this giant wall of evil looking storm clouds.  As I pulled into the parking garage the tornado siren was blowing… and in true Oklahoma fashion there was some guy out there live streaming the storm rolling into the downtown area from his phone.  When I got up to my floor everyone had been told to stay in the central area and away from the windows.  Shortly after that they called the all clear on the tornado warning, but the storm still raged on for two and a half hours.  From what I hear there is quite a lot of damage in various areas of town from the straight line winds, that can be just as destructive as a tornado.

Big Bunny Returns

I’ve talked about my love of our backyard and all of the critters that show up there periodically.  There is one however that I love above all of the rest… and that is big bunny.  Yeah I realize it is kinda a stupid name for him, but he is literally a massive bunny as seen above in the phone.  After the storms blew through apparently he decided to hang out in our backyard for awhile.  A few months back he essentially called our backyard home for a few days… and since then I have seen him all over the neighborhood so I am guessing this is a shared phenomena.  Firstly I am shocked and amazed that any rabbit would survive this long in our environment to get that damned big.  Secondly… we’ve wondered if he is a pet that someone let loose because he seems super chill around human beings.  All of this said… I may or may not have walked over to the grocery store with no purpose other than to buy something to feed the Rabbit.  When I got back he was nowhere to be seen, but I set out a pile of lettuce leaves on the deck and then thirty minutes later or so I peered out the window and sure enough… he had chomped down on the pile.  Afterwards of course I was told that lettuce was a less than ideal and often times dangerous food for Rabbits so I will have to adjust that.  Nonetheless I keep thinking that if we feed him, he might hang out in our yard more often.

Past that I took advantage of the cool evening and went out roaming looking for “mons” with little luck.  It was quite literally seventy two degrees last night, so given how often I had walked in near hundred degree temperatures… I figured I could not pass up that opportunity.  After striking out in my own neighborhood I hopped in the car and drove to a few parking lots that I have had luck in the past.  Not sure if they were scared away by the storm, or if the servers were crapping out again… but I found next to nothing.  That is until I pulled into the Aldi parking lot on a whim and found the bane of my existence… the Oddish.  I had managed to find one earlier and after a single Pokeball throw it ran away on me.  So this time around I was hoping that I would be able to catch it and finally fill that hole in my Pokedex.  The truth is the most important part of this game for me personally is catching new stuff, and when I can’t do that I get a little flustered.  So I threw a ball and it landed really well…  and got two twitches, before the damned Oddish broke out again and ran away.  So another close call but still zero luck in actually catching it.  As far as new finds for the day I did alright racking up a Bulbasaur, Koffing and Abra taking my total to 58 caught and 61 seen.