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I thought this was a good article. I think it is a shame that Mexico has had to endure so many crisis, and knowing the US has a large part to do with that doesn't make it better. But it is good to hear about the progress our southern neighbor has made, and I hope they continue. Hopefully the US can help that by cutting down the drug market that feeds and fuels the cartel violence.
Weekend actually felt long, getting Friday off as some sort of Spring Break Day probably helped. Having no excursions planned or executed was also helpful. Partied with portions of Mitzy's family on Saturday afternoon, and that was fun.
Still woefully behind in my DBA II class.
Spent yesterday, and will spend today, learning things. Yesterday was really weird, I spent a good two and a half hours playing marriage counselor to the trainer. Someone I would only label with acquaintance at the best of times. I did what I could, but never felt qualified.
Tomorrow vacation starts, then Thursday we fly to Mexico. Puerto Vallarta to be exact, and we will return Sunday. Hopefully our heads will not be found in ice chests outside of Guadalajara.
For anyone out there wondering what to get me for my birthday, Christmas, or just a special "We love and appreciate you" present, well here it is:
I can guarantee that this is something that will keep you near and dear to my heart every single time I use it.
There may be those of you who recall Oregon Trail with some fondness. I remember it from my Middle School and High School computer classes were most of the class would be huddled around an Apple IIe watching someone lead a small wagon across an infinite prairie on a small green monochrome monitor. The teacher would always have only one diskette with the game on it, so we had to take turns actually getting to control the game, though everyone was eager to weigh in on the expedition’s progress. Some few years after High School I ran across an updated version of Oregon Trail and purchased it for my 486/66 PC, and it was just as I remembered it. Only now I got to do everything myself, without all those annoying classmates to get between me and my pure pioneering fantasies.
Well, there’s a new version of the game out for the iPhone, and as soon as I heard about it I had to get it. This has been my first an only purchase of a non-free iPhone app, but I felt the situation warranted the expenditure. So after some trials and tribulations as I updated the phone’s firmware, then had to use my MacBook to actually download the app, and finally syncing it with Phone I was ready to once
again hitch up my wagon and head for the west coast.
It has to be said up front that the game is not the same as it was, though there are similarities, but it isn’t the same experience from those by-gone days. The graphics are great, the colors are vivid, and the images well done. I believe the game was developed by a Japanese studio, so the graphics have slight anime-ish feel to them, but when you were once enthralled by an 8-bit wagon rolling across a featureless prairie you don’t worry too much about those details. And anyway, I like them. I didn’t play with the sound very long, it got repetitive, especially the music, so that got muted pretty quickly.
As you get ready for your expedition you get to choose between being a Banker, a Carpenter, or a Farmer. In the older versions this simply determined how much money you started off with, but in this remake they’ve spiced it up a little. The banker still starts off with more money, but not significantly so, the carpenter has less money, but gets a bonus to his wagon durability, and the farmer has the same money as the carpenter, but gets a bonus to supply consumption. Once you choose your starting profession you get to buy your wagon. You get to choose from three styles, the cheapest standard wagon, the prairie schooner, and the pricey Conestoga super wagon (even has armored plates?). Each wagon has some bonus to speed or durability, except for the standard, so you have to weigh your decisions based on that information. Once all that is done you get the option to name your family, and you can choose the gender of the children. All of these features I thought were great little feature enhancements, giving the game a little more depth.
Now in the previous versions you had to buy supplies, and if I recall correctly you had to buy food, bullets, clothes, and wagon parts. In the iPhone release you don’t do this anymore, and you actually just hit the trail fully loaded after naming your family. I was a little disappointed in this. So off you go down the trail, and the real game begins. As you proceed through your journey you begin to see the design differences between old and new. Some things are the same, you still get to hunt, you still have to decide how to get over the rivers, family members get ill, and you determine your pace and when to rest. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, the game essentially boils down to a series of mini-games. You don’t get the option of hunting when you want or need to, but only at predetermined points, and there is no risk of not finding targets. Animals always show up, and in some cases, you are constantly attacked by waves of bears or buffalo, so it’s more of a defense than a hunt. There are two other mini-games to collect food, a berry picking game and a fishing game. When the wagon breaks down you get the option of playing the wagon fixing mini-game, which consists of timing the hitting of nails into a scrolling board. Oddly, you can choose not to fix your wagon and continue on your journey, only your wagon health bar goes down. I haven’t found out what happens if the food bar or the wagon bar gets all the way to the bottom.
When you get to a river you get the a description of the river’s depth and level of calmness, then you get the option to cross it, float it, take a ferry (if available) or hire a guide. This is pretty similar to the older versions. The change here is if you decide to float across you get put into the river crossing mini-game. You avoid rocks while trying to nab coins and supply boxes utilizing the iPhone’s motion sensing abilities. Interestingly, if you choose to hire a guide you’re treated to a cut scene of a well-muscled Indian carrying your wagon across the river.
I’ve started a game on easy, and finished it on medium. The game is fun in it’s own right, and the mini-games get more challenging as you go along. There are more decision making opportunities than the older games as you have to choose multiple routes, and you have the option of picking up hitchhikers or other travelers. At least on medium I never had to really worry about any of my family dying, and despite stopping at every opportunity to hunt, fish or whatever, I never really got crunched for time (in the old versions you had to be careful of not getting caught in the Rockies as winter started). I’ve started a game on hard, but it takes a long time to finish the game, several hours on medium, so I haven’t finished it. So, while fun, the game doesn’t seem as challenging as it could be, and I miss some of the supply decisions you had to make in the older versions, but for anyone wanting to relive those old Oregon Trail memories, you can’t go too far wrong with this one.
I like to think he made it, and is just now passing the moon on some sort of crazy Space Bat space odyssey. Click to Read
I returned from the Kingdom of Aggieland last Thursday night, and then promptly felt the need for recuperation from my toils by staying home Friday. I had wholly felt that I had earned the right to sit and do nothing all day, but Mitzy felt differently. Since we had company coming over that evening she ordained that I should take care of some issues about the house in anticipation of their arrival. For my part I think I handled the disappointment that the cancelation of my plans elicited, and while the list may not have hit 100% completion I think I made an admirable effort. To my credit I did some tasks that had not been outlined in list format, but which held hefty benefits of their own.
I was not optimistic that company coming over was the best thing for me, or Mitzy, but those apprehensions proved unfounded and we had a pleasant evening with friends. Friends we had not seen in some time, and as one of those friends is seriously pregnant, the opportunities for get-togethers will probably not increase in the near future. She is set to pop in the next two weeks, and from then on I presume she will be preoccupied.
Whilst in Aggieland I was consuming great stores of knowledge, and I had let lapse from my memory the scheduled wedding of a distant cousin that was set to occur this last Saturday in San Antonio. I was reminded mid-week. Now I will swear vehemently that I did most definitely RSVP for this event with my mother, but she said I did not, and some battles are not worth fighting. As are most battles with ones mother. Fortunately I was able to get us some hotel reservations, and communicate with my mom that we would be attending, just like I had always said I would.
I booked us at the Menger, which was surprising only twenty US dollars more than the Red Roof Inn. Now while the Menger is monstrously cooler than the Red Roof, I forget that there are additional costs to staying there, but I still felt it was worth the extra expenditure. If you’re not familiar with it, it is a historic old hotel right across from the Alamo itself, with one part new and one part old. We staid in the old part. It is also supposedly haunted, but I’ve found spectral interaction lacking. Alas, paranormal cavorting is not listed in the brochure, so I’ve never formally complained.
The trip started out well, we roused from bed around 8ish and made it out of the house before 9ish. With a brief stop in West for kolaces (sp?) we made it to Waco by 11ish. In what was probably the first of several missteps I decided we should go to my parent’s house, and then travel convoy style the rest of the way. This would be the first of several unintended annoyances and delays.
The wedding was at 7:00 in the PM, and as we left Waco around 11:30 in the AM I felt sure this would give us more than enough time to get into town, relax, and then get ready for the wedding. Of course this was wrong. The traffic from Waco through Austin was horrible and it took us the better part of an hour to make it across that cursed city. A brief aside, I hear so many people go on and on about how much they love Austin, but my most prevalent association with that city is the nightmarish traffic, gridlock and over crowding. I do not care for Austin, though I can see how one under different circumstances might grow to like it.
Past Austin and into San Antonio was much less stressful, traffic was light, I took all the right exits and was headed the exact right way when we started hitting ROAD CLOSED barriers. Evidently they decided to close off every street going into the Alamo Plaza area. Due to some sort of Art Festival. This presented a challenge since the Menger is on Alamo Plaza. After about a half hour of tense moments, frenzied navigation, probably traffic violations and a brief call to the Menger front desk we managed to arrive at our destination mostly unscathed.
Once checked in, I felt like things would get better, and indeed I was surprised to find that they had put us in a suite. I had expected a simple room, and that was all I had ordered, but for whatever reason we got a nice suite with a sitting area and two bathrooms. This was an undeniable upswing in our fortunes thus far, and did a lot to cool frayed nerves. At least for a while. The only downside to this suite business was its name, the William T. Sherman Suite. How a hotel in the south, based in San Antonio could name a suite after that Yankee jackanape I’ll never
know, but I did get over it.
Preparation for the wedding left little time for rest, recovery and relaxation. The delays had added up and we were forced to scramble to get ready in order to facilitate the established time line. Beleaguered, yet doughty we mustered on through the complexities of coordinating logistics with my family as led by my mother. After myriad phone calls back and forth we were picked up and on our way, and while mother fretted about our tardiness we were to find out that these types of events rarely start on time.
The wedding itself was fun, if not overly crowded. I would come to learn that the original plan had been to incorporate both indoor and outdoor areas of the Witte Museum, yet due to the weather we were all packed indoors. It must be stated that my cousins on this side of the family lavished great ladles of cash for this shindig, but it is undeniable that the exact execution and quality of service left a little to be desired. Full open bars do a lot to make you forget small inequities on service though, so I think we all managed to have a good time. We finally got back to the hotel around midnight, and after watching Cheaters (oh yeah!) we eagerly got into the huge king-sized bed and fell asleep. It was a refreshing rest, but not long enough. The absence of cats to wake us up meant we both slept the night through, but wheels were already in motion, and plans had been made for Sunday morning. And who am I to blow against the wind?
Said plans were to take the traveling family circus to Mi Tierra at the Market Plaza for breakfast, but it was not to be as originally conceived. My mother made vailiant attempts to herd the proverbial cats, but the structural integrity of her machinations fell apart as the navigation to Market Plaza proved overwhelming. Mitzy and I had already left the hotel, we were going to take the trolly there, as we had done before, and this is much easier than traversing downtown San Antonio. A last frazzled call from my mother told me that the jig was up and everyone was going home, including them. I told her to have fun, but we were already on our way, so we’d talk to them later. It was then that she finally came out of mother hen mode and decided she didn’t have to watch over the rest of the family (indeed, six adults could travel north to Waco by themselves). So they met us there and all was right with the world, mostly, except that after giving our name to the host they switched host stations (yes, they have two!) and our place was lost. I was a little pissed at this, I don’t agree that we should have gone behind people we were previously ahead of, but Mi Tierra is crazy popular, and crazy busy, I doubt they give two tugs about one group of customers. Plus, we’d already endured several trials of patience, so what was one more. We did finally make it to our table, and we ate, and it was enjoyable. When we left I couldn’t believe the amount of people waiting to be seated, it was really incredible, but honestly I don’t see what the fuss was about. The food was good, but definitely not as good as what we can get in Dallas.
Thankfully the rest of the trip was uneventful and a little after noon we made our way back up towards Dallas via I-35. We stopped briefly at the IKEA outside of Austin to pick up some things we hadn’t been able to procure from the Frisco IKEA. We only stopped for a burger in Belton, but that was our last stop, and we made it back home safe and sound. It was a much more frantic trip than I had imagined, I had hoped for a semi-relaxed jaunt, but there’s only so much you can do with unexpected circumstances. I hadn’t bargained on Spring Break, and there were evidently a lot of folks taking advantage of their vacation time. The traffic south was unbelievably packed, and it made me very glad we were headed north.