July 2013 - Page 6 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Ordeal

July 12, 2013 by Belghast

So much happy right now… I am sitting at home on my comfy sofa typing on my laptop. I cannot express in words just how good it feels to be here. I am not a huge fan of travel, I don’t mind being other places… but I greatly prefer being home. Quite honestly… New York is probably the furthest I have been from home, and while it was entertaining I am elated to be back here.

The Ordeal

Travelling to Albany was rather un-eventful and everything essentially went nice and smooth. My biggest complaint was the lack of free WiFi at Chicago O’Hare/ The trip home however… had lots of moments of annoyance. First off I managed to take a wrong turn on the way to the airport. As a result I ended up turning on my android navigation… which took us on quite possibly the most scenic route ever to get back to the Troy-Schenectady Road. I drove through tons of residential neighborhoods having to take turns at almost every intersection… but eventually we met back up with the right road and we were on our way.

My wife had offered a lift to two other classmates that did not have transportation… so after dropping them off at the terminal we went to the car garage to drop off our rental. This is singlehandedly the most poorly designed feature of the Albany Airport… and as a result cars just end up backing up as people bail out to meet their flight… often times leaving the keys in the ignition and the car running. We were in no major rush… so we politely waited through the mess and were directed into a parking lot.

At this point we had to wait again… for the single person who was handling all drop offs and requisitions for both Alamo and Enterprise. I felt sorry for this guy… because he looked seriously stressed. We waited around… got our receipt and apparently they had charged us for a couple of extra hours… stating that we had returned it late. It was around this point that my wife went into attack mode… because she had stated multiple times when renting the car that we would not be returning it until 5 pm on Thursday… as she didn’t even get out of her conference until 3.

When I say attack mode… she was doing all of this as politely as possible… but still being extremely insistent. Apparently the poor employee had just had enough of the place… and ended up giving us a massive discount as well as removing the extra charges. So that settled we made our way across the street… through the plumes of smoke left by people trying to get a last minute cigarette… and into the ticketing area. I really wish that smokers should experience just once… what their addiction does to an asthmatic. But since they are seemingly fine with poisoning others… I am guessing they just wouldn’t give a crap.

Nine Pounds

We waited in a line, and made our way up to the ticketing kiosk. My wife went first since she is again the road warrior and can do those kiosks without thinking. There was no real place to set our bag at first, but soon an employee came over and cleared the scale and I hoisted the big orange beast onto it. The rather snooty employee informed us that we were nine pounds over weight. We either had to remove nine pounds from the bag or pay an extra hundred dollars to check the bag. I am not shitting you… one hundred dollars… for nine frickin pounds.

So my wife rifled through the bag because she thought she knew what the culprit was. As a result of the conference she had gained this massive 3 inch binder full of course materials. Sure enough after removing that it took the bag weight down to a level that the snooty ass would be willing to accept. Since I only had one carry on… we just decided to bring the binder along and store it in the overhead bin. So I spent most of yesterday carrying my laptop/camera bag and a huge three ring binder… I did not look geeky at all… I swear.

My Awesome Bag

I want to take a few minutes to talk about my bag… now that I have mentioned it. This thing is seriously amazing… and served perfectly for what I was needing. Essentially I was looking for a way to carry both my laptop, camera and lenses in one compact form factor. I ended up searching around and finally settled on this one from amazon… the above image was taken of the bag fully loaded in the hotel room. I was able to stuff a ton of tech in one bag… and then carry it around with me. Fully stuffed it was a bit difficult to cram in some of the overhead bins… but I managed to do so with a little bit of effort.

Just for reference… this is all the stuff in the above bag.

15.6” Lenovo y500 Laptop
y500 Power Brick
Large Monoprice gaming mousepad
Logitech g600 MMO Mouse
Earbud Headphones
USB Cable and Brick for Cellphone
Sony PSP in Case
Sony PSP Charger
Two Cliff Bars – in case we got hungry while travelling
Canon t3i DSLR
4 Lenses for DSLR
6 Filters for DSLR
Wide Angle Adapter for DSLR
Fisheye Adapter for DSLR

So yeah… this bag holds a ton of stuff, and does so in a fashion that still makes it easy to carry. While I mostly bought this for the trip… it actually makes a far better camera bag than my pervious one… because it gives rapid access to all the stuff in it. With the laptop and chargers out… it is actually rather light. This will definitely become handy whenever we start going up to the lake. Additionally it would let me bring both my laptop and camera to work… if I wanted to end up going out over lunch and taking photos.

Airplane Juggling

So back to our tale… after all the manipulation of our luggage and drama with mister snooty pants… we were finally able to just chill out at the gate waiting on the airplane. We got to our gate… and immediately realized that this was going to be one of those rare occasions where we had to walk out on the tarmac to load into the plane. While we were sitting there… we noticed that pretty much every plane listed as coming from Newark was delayed. Ours was currently on time… but that didn’t stay that way for long.

We heard over the intercom that that our flight had not left the gate at Newark yet, and that they had a bunch of empty spaces on one currently loading at a different gate. So we hustled upstairs and when we got there… they called our names specifically. Apparently they were giving higher priority to those with connecting flights once we arrived at Newark. I have to say… airport workers catch a lot of shit… and I dished out my own little bit about mister snooty pants…. but these guys upstairs were amazing. I watched this lady fight with the registration system trying to juggle us off one flight and onto another… while her manager was constantly calling down to the baggage room to make sure they got each passengers luggage off of the other flight and onto this one.

After about thirty minutes of serious reservation system hackery… she managed to get us new passes for the plane that was already loaded and waiting at this point… and in doing so managed to get us seats side by side. I cannot impress upon you enough just how awesome it was to see them working. We thanked them profusely and boarded the plane. It seems like most of the passengers that had connecting flights, even this very sweet girl who was flying by herself for the first time… and was more than a bit freaked out… got loaded onto the earlier flight.

Newark: Eater of Souls

Newark is hands down the most poorly designed airport I have seen… which isn’t saying much… but my wife the frequent flier agrees. Essentially the layout of the place involves three completely stand alone concourses. There is an automated tram that runs between the three… but for whatever reason it loads on the OTHER side of the freakin security barrier. So if you decide to use it… you have to exit security… and then pass back through the security checks to get in. It seems like as a result the individual airlines have various workarounds in place.

United Airlines runs a shuttle bus that goes between the terminals. How this works however… is that they have essentially given up a gate and built a waiting room… and ramp that goes down to the tarmac. About every 10 minutes a bus arrives and passengers can load onto it to go to either concourse A or B. We missed the first bus since the waiting room was already packed when we got there. So by the time we waited on a second bus… loaded it… took the not insignificant trip across to concourse A.. we only had a few minutes left before our plane was set to depart.

Three Hour Tour

After having just enough time to hit the restroom and sit back down… it was time to board our flight from Newark to Tulsa. This was yet again a step down in size, so instead of two seats on either side of the isle… this plane had 1 seat on one side… and 2 on the other. By the time wet got in… and found out seat it was occupied by a Chinese woman that spoke almost zero English. We pantomimed that she was in the wrong seat and were able to go through the process of getting strapped in place for the duration. On a positive note… I apparently no longer need the extender thingy.

This flight was without a doubt the most chatty group I have ever encountered. There were multiple conversations going on that often times spanned multiple rows. I would have greatly preferred if everyone would have just sat in silence… but the amount of alcohol being imbibed pretty much made this an impossibility. Also since all flights going into Newark were being delayed… I am guessing there was a lot of time spent in various airport bars along the way. The worst example of this was the duo directly in front of me.

In the single seat we had a Country Boy CFO from a random company in Joplin, MO… and to his side was a nice Indian gentleman that said he worked in IT… though from the cut of his suit… he had to be somewhere in management. The two of them struck up a conversation… that managed to last all three hours of the flight… and got progressively more and more animated the more alcohol the CFO partook of. By the time we neared Tulsa… country boy was full on dropping f-bombs every few minutes. The last rant I recall was something about “effing welfare”.

At multiple points throughout the conversation he talked about how everything thinks he is dumb by the way he talks… but he is much smarter than they give him credit for. To which I think to myself… if you have to keep reminding people that you are smart… it becomes progressively less likely than it is actually true. There were so many points during the flight that I wanted to hit him over the head with something large and heavy. Especially when he went off on a tear about how not dressing up shows a lack of work ethic. This is a feat of logic I just cannot manage to follow… I suppose it only makes sense if you are drunk.

About the last hour forward, the nice IT guy, kept trying to extract himself from the conversation.. eventually saying that he needed to catch some shuteye. At which point he started fumbling under his seat to find a bottle that had fallen down… which instead turned out to be my foot. When he realized this he profusely apologized and we all had a laugh. Finally we landed in Tulsa… after what seemed like an eternity in good ole boy hell. By the time I hobbled off the plane.. it was like after three hours in a cramped space I had forgotten how to walk right.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately we made it out to the baggage carousel, and of all amazing wonders our big orange bag had managed to arrive in Tulsa just fine. I feel absolutely drained by the whole ordeal. New York was an interesting place to visit, but I am extremely happy to be back in my wonderful home. Apparently the cats missed us… because right now I have one on me… wife has one on her… and the other is laying between us. Hopefully it will be a long while before I fly again… the next trip needs to be a road trip. I hope you all have a great day and a great weekend.

Homeward Bound

July 11, 2013 by Belghast

This morning as I sit at the keyboard typing away… my laptop remains essentially the only thing not yet packed and ready too be loaded into our rental. I have a mixture of excitement and trepidation… excitement because I will be so glad to be home… and trepidation because I detest flying… and know I have to deal with a 3 hour flight from Newark to Tulsa. Hopefully everything at home is just fine, and that our animals are all happy and healthy, and that the house sitter had no real issues.

Holding Pattern

The most frustrating thing about this trip so far has been that while I had all the time in the world to do anything I liked… I did not have stable enough internet to do much of it. Sunday night when we finally arrived at our hotel room, the internet was awesome… while not quite up to what I am used to at home… it was more than sufficient. Monday the cast of an off Broadway show arrived… and from that point onwards regardless of the time of day… most everything has been unplayable if I could even get connected in the first place.

It feels like so much has been going on this week, with the anniversary events happening in The Secret World and a release of a new content update. Then over in Guild Wars 2 there is quite a lot of stuff happening as well. Finally I am still in the thrall of my Rift resurgence… and for whatever reason this is the game that seems to hate the hotel internet the most. I will start off with a decent ping, but very quickly it degrades into completely unplayable. Often times I ultimately just ended up disconnecting and not being able to get back on afterwards.

Very quickly I realized that I would have to just wait to do much of anything until I got home today. As a result I feel like I have been trying to find things that did not necessarily involve an internet connection to play them. Unfortunately while my laptop is loaded full of MMOs… it is sadly lacking in the single player and offline departments. With the Hotel Internet not being super stable… I can’t really download anything from steam that I have in my archives.

A Game of Cubes

Cube World was released last week sometime… but the store went almost immediately offline… and stayed that way for the majority of the week. When the ability to purchase the game came back… they had taken the new accounts sign-up feature offline. So it became a daily activity of checking whether or not this was open for registration, and finally on Saturday night… before we left for Albany… the registrations opened up and I was able to grab ahold of a copy. This game has served as my mostly offline shiny new thing to play with on this trip.

The game as a whole is much harder than I was expecting it to be. Initially I was thinking this would be much more Minecraft than it has ended up being. Essentially you start out in a completely randomly generated world… with little to no ability to actually kill anything. At first you end up following around packs of NPC adventurers that will help you combat the bad guys you encounter in the world. As a result… the process of getting from “I suck at everything” to “I can survive mostly on my own” feels a little tedious.

I am not sure if this is just another game that loathes melee players or not, because generally ranged tends to be easier as a whole than melee in most games like this. I detest finger wigglers. so of course I had to go for sword and board… though over time I have migrated to dual wield. The block mechanic works well enough… but only for insanely short periods of time. When you are dealing with monsters that seem to be able to do non-stop special moves… it just isn’t enough to make the difference.

My biggest complaint thus far is that the torch feels inadequate for illuminating anything really. It creates roughly a 5 block by 5 block bubble of light around you… but when it comes to exploring anything like a cave… it is extremely hard to see where you are going. I am hoping that over time you can get upgrades that increase your radius of light similar to how you can in Terraria. If you intend to craft metal upgrades… you will spend a lot of time looking for caves, fighting bats and destroying iron nodes. As a result the lighting system feels extremely limiting.

The major complaint I have had with the system… is that I feel it would have been better if it supported a building system like Minecraft or Terraria. I like exploring… but I also like having bases of operation that gives me a feeling that I am actually changing the world around me. The exploration aspect of the game is great, and I love encountering monsters I have never seen before… and often times dying to them the first time. But I wish I could be building things in the world as well. If this game could be blended with Minecraft the hybrid would probably be the most addicting game ever.

Fort Belghast

As a direct result of playing Cube World… and this feeling that I wanted to be shaping my world… I have spent a lot of time alternating back and forth between exploring in that game… and building over in Minecraft. I started a brand new world and the seed I chose had a really nice shallow cave system. I started off boxing that in and using it as a prebuilt base until I started constructing a proper fort on top of it. Right now the underground area has a few large chambers, with a structure growing up into the little fort that you can see in the image above.

I created an elevated bridge style entrance, because it allows me to see what is surrounding my base before exiting out into the dangerous world. Also when there are a large number of zombies or similar around me… it funnels them into one single block place for farming. Additionally if I absolutely have to… I can bail over the wall to escape something. Right now I am quarrying stone from below the base to build up the tower system above. As you can see in the above picture… the tower is currently woefully unfinished.

I hope to do some terracing eventually to clean up the area and make the approach to my fort a little nicer looking. I have really not done that much exploration… my focus has really been on building up a solid base of operations. Eventually I will start a mine system below my base where I can hopefully get plenty of ores and other special resources. I mostly play Minecraft to build structures… but for whatever reason it feels more real to me.. if I do it on survival. I could be just as happy playing on creative… since all I really want to do is build nifty things… but the world then feels completely dead.

Homeward Bound

I cannot express in words… how happy I will be to leave this area and get back home. I miss essentially everything… my animals… my comfy sofa… a world that makes sense to me. I’ve found plenty of interesting things to do to kill my time… but it was not really the grand voyage of discovery I was hoping for. I know the workshop my wife attended, has been massively useful for her… and each night she has come home with pictures of the labs and activities they did. So the major focus of this trip was a complete success… and my being here… was just to make sure that happened.

I came on this trip just because I wanted to make sure my wife could attend this workshop. While she is a trooper and an amazing road warrior… she would have struggled with driving in this environment. She doesn’t really like driving period… and Tulsa traffic is far more sane and rational than anything I have experienced here. Her lack of depth perception would have been a major issue in this environment where I am essentially constantly scanning both sides of the street watching for some idiot that is about to dart out into the middle of traffic (as has happened so many times I have lost count). So ultimately regardless of how I have felt about this vacation… I feel like my role in it was a success.

So essentially today I have to check us out of the hotel at noon and then figure out a way to kill 3 hours of time until I pick my wife up from class. We are ferrying two other classmates to the airport… turning in our rental… and catching a 5 pm flight to Newark. We have a 45 minute wait until we catch another flight to Tulsa that should take 3 hours. So hopefully by about 9:30-10ish tonight I will be home in my own bed. After the hotel bed all these nights… our comfy bed at home will be amazing.

Wrapping Up

This has been an interesting experiencing even if it has not been super exciting. Time for me to do some googling to figure out how exactly I will kill the rest of the day. Thinking I will play some Minecraft until around noon… pack up the rental and then set off and do something for the rest of the afternoon. Elo was telling me about another mall with another game store… so I will likely set my sights on that. I hope you all have a great day, and that it is relatively uneventful.

Bilgewater Trade Cartel

July 10, 2013 by Belghast

Why is it… that a bed that is uncomfortable at 10 pm… can become the most comfortable thing in the universe at 6 am? Feeling very creaky as the hotel bed seems to not agree with my back, but that is nothing a few Tylenol will not cure. It feels like the time shift thing is catching up with me… last night I could not for the life of me get to sleep and this morning I simply do not want to wake up. Luckily however just one more morning of this before I am back home. I miss my comfy spot on the couch a lot when I try to game here in the relatively uncomfortable office chair on a table that is just a tiny bit too high.

Bilgewater Trade Cartel

Yesterday it was confirmed by Bashiok that in 5.4 they would be adding in a cash shop for the World of Warcraft. Apparently to some in the WoW community this is shocking and disturbing news, and Rowan wrote up a nice piece covering his thoughts on the matter. Much the same as him… I am an outsider watching this situation evolve as I have no real vested interest in the game any longer. I still have a good number of friends playing it, in and theory I am still leading House Stalwart over there by proxy. I gave up the guild leader crown, but the person I handed it off to consults me on most major decisions… not that I really expected that… but that has been what happened in practice.

What I don’t understand is why this is such a shock to the installed player base? I am honestly surprised this has not happened before now. The fact that you could go to battle.net and hit the store and purchase lots of in game items right away… means that essentially for years World of Warcraft has had a cash shop. Placing this in game just streamlines the process, and makes it more of an impulse buy. Additionally it allows them to expand their product offering to include different sorts of items. Again… I am shocked this has not happened before now… as they already have a large catalog of items and services available for a fee.

I’ve said this before… and I will say it again… I feel all of this is leading to Blizzard announcing a free to play conversion. Right now it is just them, Eve Online, and Final Fantasy XIV that have subscriptions… the last not even fully re-released yet… so that could change. Everything I have heard is that Blizzard has lost favor in China, and that World of Warcraft is no longer the cool thing it once was there. As a result they have taken serious losses in player base there, if not completely losing that market. This has been the thing that seriously overinflated their subscriber numbers, especially since WoW Asia already had a vastly different payment model than the United States monthly subscribers.

I feel like since it does not seem like they have much else in the pipeline… they will be making the big announcement at Blizzcon this year. I feel like this is a decision they are going to have to make with the changes in the market, the constant trickle of player losses, and the fact that there is nothing on the horizon for at least another year. This is pending an expansion announcement, which would at least be a year out. If not another expansion… then the next big thing on the horizon is Titan in 2016. There is just nothing there to ignite the player base and make them care about the game, so if nothing else I feel like a free to play decision might bring back existing players and get them to spend some money on the game.

I feel like Star Wars the Old Republic and Rift have both made the Free to Play conversion a much more palatable one for Blizzard. In both cases they proved that they could make the switch and become more profitable in the process. For a company with a deeply aging game, aging infrastructure and no clear content ark for storyline progression… it has to be something that looks mighty tantalizing right now. The only possible reason why Blizzard would not make this call is big stubborn pride. But as they start to lose more money… the pride thing eventually goes out the window. Whatever is good for the bottom line of the company… and keeps the doors open… is ultimately good for the most dedicated player base.

Old Friends Renewed

Elowynn, Falconwing and Egan are folks I have known for roughly eight years of playing online games. Back in vanilla wow, my guild House Stalwart and their guild Silent Strike were close allies and did a ton of content together. There were many joint Zul’Gurub runs that I can remember fondly. As Stalwart moved through Burning Crusade we got more and more “serious” about the content, our guilds started to drift apart as our focus was just in a difference place. But during this time, there was not a period where I was not in communication with these folks… and if we needed subs for a raid I always threw a query out to them.

All these years later, I am finding out that they have a very active guild presence over on Faeblight. Since I am on crappy hotel internet… I decided to roll a low level character to go visit with them. I have to say it is in many ways like coming home. While a lot of the people are different, the core of Elo, Falcon and Egan make the Silent Strike guild over on Faeblight feel all warm and fuzzy. I am really wishing I had known about it when I came back to the game some time ago. I love my friends that are in Outcast Misfits… but I have to admit I have a pull towards trying to transfer over to Faeblight.

Ultimately when it was just me… it was no big deal. But over the course of the last several weeks I have gotten a large number of the Stalwarts and various other friends playing Rift again. We’ve used the Stalwart channel to organize things… but it would be awesome if we could end up all in the same place. The Misfits are nice folks, but I am just used to a role-playing environment… namely because of the naming rules. The Misfits have some members I have literally reported for offensive naming violations… and that is just not something I am used to having to stomach within the guild I am in. They have provided an extremely friendly place to hang out, but I keep wondering if our folks would be better served with Silent Strike on Faeblight.

Ultimately I have stayed with the Misfits, because it opened a lot of doors for my people. If any of them decided they wanted to raid… then they would have those options. But honestly I find myself mostly sticking to the people I know… and the server channel we created. Silent Strike at least are extremely similar to the type of environment we had with House Stalwart. I guess ultimately I have been looking for that type of environment all along. Catari Honor Guard was it… until the membership stopped playing… but since then I just haven’t found anyplace I feel comfortable calling a home. I would be nice to feel like inviting someone to a guild… without having to give them a bunch of disclaimers about how the members are a little “rough around the edges”.

Breakfast Hard Roll

For the last few mornings… I have ended up going into Stewart’s a Upstate New York convenience store to get a pop in the morning. Near the checkout they have had these bins with a sign above it that says “Hard Rolls”. They are divided into neat little bins… one for Butter, one for Peanut Butter, and one for Peanut Butter and Jelly. As I waited in line… I would watch people grab 2 or 3 at a time… and it all seemed amazingly odd. So that after experiencing this enigma for a few days… I decided I had to try one this morning.

It is apparently truth in advertising… a Kaiser roll or Hard roll as people here apparently call them… sliced down the middle and covered in butter. After doing some figuration… it is roughly 300 calories… and is the dirt cheap price of $0.85. I guess this is a relatively cheap way to get fast and easy sustenance. Quite honestly… the roll itself was rather tasty… nice and soft on the inside and nice and buttery and crusty on the outside. The butter inside as well was of a seemingly good quality… or at least it did not taste like fake butter.

I still do not fully get why people seem to be buying multiples of these at a time… other than the fact that maybe since I am I staying in the ghetto… it is a cheap way to get some calories in you. Maybe they are going to have them for lunch? It was tasty enough for me to eat it again, because I have always had a weakness for bread and butter. I just find the concept of that being normal convenience store fair a little odd. In Oklahoma you expect to have Hot Dogs, Nachos, Taquitos, little Breakfast Sandwiches… maybe donuts… but not fresh rolls.

Wrapping Up

I have zero idea what I am going to do with myself today. I know at some point I should probably leave the room so that the maids can work freely without trying to move around me. I guessed the time at which they would clean the room wrong yesterday… and ended up back here before they had done so. I had a nice conversation with the maid however, and she apparently does not really like Schenectady either. She misses working in Florida… and I suppose I would too. I also get the impression she was extremely happy to have someone willing to talk to her. Anyways I hope you all have great days… and I will endevour to figure out how to kill another day.

No Place Like Home

July 9, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning all you happy people in internet land. Today I am going to try and catch up on sleep, since I have not really been sleeping well in a foreign bed. Additionally it would be nice to make some progress on my “How To Rift” series… and since I have nothing but time to kill until we fly out of here Thursday… it might be the perfect time to do it. I feel like I just need a chill day to recuperate from the travel, since I have been operating at roughly 5 am on my body’s internal clock.

A Wild Lummy

The highlight of yesterday without a doubt was meeting up with a longtime gaming friend Atonal/Lummy. I’ve played with him off and on in various games since the original Everquest. So I have literally known him over a decade, but never thought we would actually meet face to face. There is sometimes awkwardness when you meet someone for the first time after knowing them for years online. So I suggested we meet up for lunch, since that in my experience is about the perfect amount of interactivity.

Not knowing the area… I asked him to suggest a place… so we met up at the Park Pub in Troy, NY. The food was phenomenal. At his suggestion I had the peanut butter and jelly wings… which I was slightly skeptical at first but man they were amazing. They were unbelievably messy… and there is no way to eat something like that without getting copious amounts of sauce in your beard… but amazing nonetheless. Additionally I had green bean fries… that I had heard of before but never actually had… or at least not had in this fashion.

We hung out there and talked for awhile. We shot the shit about games and the like… and various fish out of water experiences I was having here in New York. Afterwards I roamed around Troy a little bit before making a beeline back to the hotel. I had to get back so I could pick my wife up from the conference for the day and run around. He mentioned getting together today to catch a single A ball game, but honestly I am just too dead to do much of anything constructive today. Would have been enjoyable, but I doubt he wants me falling asleep and snoring in the ballpark.

No Place Like Home

The longer I am here, the more I realize just how lucky I have it in Tulsa, and just how amazing that town is. I always assumed that the Albany area was a much larger market than Tulsa… but each time I search Google to see if they have a this or a that… they lack anything that Tulsa lacks… and also a lot of the things that Tulsa does have. Additionally when we have gone into stores… they seem to carry far less than the ones we have near us. It is just an odd mental shift for me… I went into this little adventure thinking I would be going to a much larger market… and realize now that they are quite a bit behind Tulsa in most aspects.

By my friends assessment, we are essentially staying in the slums of the Albany area… and this has been an odd adjustment as well. The hotel we are staying in is rather nice, but the area surrounding us is very much not. Each night we have heard gunshots, and last night there was what sounded like a major firefight concluded by some screams. This is all definitely not something we are used to… two times now we have seen someone get arrested in the vicinity of where we were. Last night in Latham we watched a guy behind us get pulled over… 3 cop cars, two cops with guns on him… as he surrendered a gun on the roof of his car and was handcuffed all while waiting on a traffic light to turn green.

I can’t say I am necessarily frightened by any of this… the reality may not have fully sunken in. Its like watching some surreal show playing out in front of me. The only thing I am afraid of however is that I will hit one of the idiots that keeps darting out into the street to cross the major thoroughfares down here. I have damned near hit 3 men on bikes… and come close to hitting 4 or 5 kids as they darted out into traffic. This effect is the worst in the area near our hotel… and as we move away from it, the problem lessens. But we have yet to really find anything I would say is the “good” area of town.

That has been an odd concept for me… we are in this area surrounded on all sides by untamed land essentially. But I have yet to find any “new” construction… nothing resembling the looming housing editions we are used to, or the shiny and new shopping centers. Everything seems to be built on top of essentially existing areas. Last night we roamed from all around the metro area and made a circuit between Albany, Troy, and Schenectady… and while we found a lot more of the same thing we had been finding before… we have not really found what I would call suburbs, or at least not what we are used to in Oklahoma.

Homesick

Maybe I am just a bit homesick. Normally when we travel it is to some new and magical place, filled with new sights and interesting new attractions. This delays the fact that I really don’t like travelling much, and that would rather just be in my comfy home. It eventually hits… that feeling of “man I just want to be home”, but it usually takes awhile to get there. Here in the Albany metro… there are not that many new things to experience. While I am still having fun and enjoying myself… I will definitely be ready to go home to my house and my animals… and my bed.

Downtown Albany was extremely majestic… but the problem we keep running into is that every place we would like to take photos at… is either in a horrible area of town, has copious no trespassing signs… or there is no real good place to park and take a photo. So while the views downtown were amazing… there was no real place to stop that could even vaguely take in the view. All these old industry giant era buildings look more like castles than they do civic structures. I guess that is part of it as well… there are so many remnants of past greatness that it is a bit sad to see the state the town is in now.

Everywhere you go there are signs of just how amazing a place this area used to be. I took a trip up to Rotterdam and they have this massive factory… bigger than I have ever seen. But the town surrounding it is this giant sprawling slum. I guess I am saddened in a way but a lack of civic pride on an epic scale in these areas. It feels like they have such amazing heritage, but have grossly squandered them. Maybe this comes from the fact that in Tulsa we have been on a major downtown revitalization program, and every inch of these past structures is being reclaimed and renovated by businesses. So our cool old stuff is becoming cool new stuff on a nearly monthly basis.

Wrapping Up

Well it is just about time for me to run my wife into the conference. Going to try and find some breakfast and then come back to the hotel… crash for a bit and maybe work on the “How To Rift” series. I hope you all are having a great day… and I hope none of the Albany area readers are now pissed at me over my assessment of the town. I will be thankful to be heading home on Thursday… because I miss my place in the world.