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I’ve learned a few more interesting things about Ikariam. Some of the most valuable are concerning attacking other cities, and being attacked.

1. When attacking another city don’t leave your own undefended. Sure, you would think this was common sense, but peace and leads to a false sense of security. I recently thought I would try my hand at attacking a neighboring city. I sent all of my ships to attack a harbor, and while they were gone guess what happened. That’s right, somebody else attacked me and got away with a bunch of loot. Easy for them since my harbor was undefended.
2. When attacked, move goods out of that city. The individual that attacked me the first time thought it was so lucrative, he launched another attack the next day. Fortunately I was watching the game and saw him coming, so I was able to make him pay. I quickly moved all of my valuable goods to a neighboring colony. He spent a lot of ships and troops to come away with a handful of gold, and no other loot. I’m sure the expedition was a costly one. Serves him right.
3. Be sure you have enough wine when under siege. The biggest cost to me on both attacks was a lack of wine. My wine ran out and my citizens got angry and started jumping ship. Kind of irritating. Of course I couldn’t resupply quickly enough, and that’s cost me a lot of gold, which leads to my final tip for this session.
4. Build big museums. Museums are nice because they allow you to keep your people happy with limited daily cost. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to maintain a large enough museum to keep a large city happy without wine, but it definitely softens the blow, and everyone is pretty happy to do a cultural exchange with you.

A couple interesting notes to make about the randomness of the game play. The combat reports of my recent hammering is no longer in my military section. I’m not sure why this is, if my opponent stopped playing the game. I don’t know if his attacks were so costly he was then overrun by someone else, or if there is some other reason why the history disappeared. This is unfortunate, I liked having that for reference. Another annoyance is the cost of maintaining an army altogether. The cost of maintaining, defending and attacking other players is astronomical. It’s difficult to come out of the deal and show a profit. You almost have to spy out the place before hand and then get lucky in order to generate a profit, and it’s really easy for your spies to get caught. Guess that’s a correlation with real life, intelligence gathering is difficult, and war can be extremely costly, but it would be nice if it was a little more economical to invade your neighbors.

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Back in January I posted an article about CFL lights. I decided to run a test, replacing 6 of 7 light bulbs with cfls.

I’m happy to announce, the results are in. All 6 of the CFLs I installed are still burning brightly, but last week the lone incandescent burnt out. Obviously, this isn’t a perfect test, maybe I will run it again. I still have some incandescents, I think I will replace the burnt out bulb today with a new one and see if it lasts longer than the cfls.

The interesting thing would be to see if I can establish how long the bulbs last, and compare the costs with them. This CFL Savings Calculator, with it’s default settings, shows a savings of $0.44/month or $8.86/year for each CFL bulb. It would be interesting to see if my data supports that. If their numbers are accurate, and I have about 20 bulbs in my home, the total savings would be around $175/year. That’s not a huge amount of money, but worth doing.

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My grandfather’s recent passing has motivated me to move this blog back to it’s original intentions. One of my original goals was to relate stories about my life and my family’s life. My grandparents and great grandparents were somewhat colorful characters, and over the years we have quite a few stories. Some you may find interesting, some you may not, but I thought I would start out with the story that was probably my grandfather’s favorite.

My grandfather was always a spirited individual. I don’t think he was ever really bad, or dishonest, but he did have quite the attitude. One place this manifested was in his driving. When he was driving his old pickup he would go up and down the road at 30mph, not matter what the speed limit was, but get him behind the wheel of a car and it was a totally different situation.

Back when he was a kid in the early 40s, my great grandfather had a Buick. If memory serves it was a 1936 model. This car was a very powerful vehicle at the time, much faster than many things on the road. For those of you familiar with Loveland Colorado, one of the main roads through town, Lincoln Ave, was a two way street at the time (it’s been a one way for as long as I remember). There was an armory just south of 1st street on Lincoln, probably about the last thing on the way out of town. After the armory the road goes down a hill, continues for 2-3 miles before heading up what has been traditionally known as Derby Hill.

My grandfather, grandmother, and some other friends were headed out to the Kness farm one evening, and my grandfather was exceeding the speed limit. The local police were sitting in the armory parking lot in a Hudson Terraplane when my grandfather came flying by. Now the Terraplane was supposed to be a powerful vehicle as well, but the cops didn’t even bother to give chase.

The next day, my great grandfather received a letter in the mail from the police. They wanted him to come in for a traffic ticket. He went and and the cops told him his car had been speeding the night before. My great grandfather told them he wasn’t driving the car last night, so it couldn’t have been him. He then asked the police “If the car was speeding, why didn’t you stop it”. The cops responded “He was going so fast, by the time we would have gotten started he would have been over Derby Hill”

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I was in a local Best Buy last week with my brother in law. I made the comment that I need a new camera. My good old Kodak Easy Share has been a great camera but I broke it last year when we were in Nebraska. Tried to put it under the seat of my Warrior and broke the screen.

My desire is for a rugged camera. I don’t need a lot of features, just something that’s easy to use and will withstand all of my trips to Moab, Walden and other off road destinations.

Amazingly enough, in the very aisle we are in I found the Argus Bean. It has an integrated clip, and a rubberized exterior, marketed as an outdoor camera. This camera appears to be exclusively available at Best Buy, and is reasonably priced at $59.

My question to you, gentle reader, is how good is this camera? Does anyone have one? Any thoughts, reviews, comments? Any other options on a reasonably priced, rugged, outdoor camera that would fit my needs?

If you have any information on this camera, or any others, please feel free to comment.

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Yesterday morning my grandfather, Orville Weber, passed from this world to the next.

Eighty eight years old, he was still in reasonably good health and lived on his farm with my grandmother. He had started yesterday out like any other day, went to town for parts for his lawn mower, left the house on his golf cart and headed to the barn to work. All indications are that he probably started feeling bad, and headed back to the house. On his way across the yard, somewhere on that final trip his heart failed. A few minutes later my grandmother went out to mail a letter, and saw his golf cart stopped against some rocks. She called the paramedics, and the ambulance came. He was transported to McKee Medical Center, but there was nothing to be done. He was gone.

At 11:19 am I got a call from a friend of mine, another mutual friend of ours who drives truck for a local paving company had seen the ambulances headed to my grandparents house and wanted to know what was going on. Even though I live in another city - I knew about the incident minutes from the time it occurred. It makes me feel good to know that my grandfather was so well known and liked that even the paving crews that drove by his house every day were watching out for him.

My grandfather is a hard man to describe. He was a farmer all his life, and successful, but his life wasn’t defined by his major accomplishments. What was more important were all the little things he did. The way that he never backed down from anyone or anything. His quiet way where most people who didn’t know him thought he was so serious. The way he would tease all the old ladies at church every Sunday. The way he could pour anything from one container to another without ever spilling a drop. The way he would sit out on a tractor all day long just as happy as a clam. The way he would eat tuna fish, miracle whip and ketchup sandwiches. The way his plate always looked cleaner after dinner than it did before. The way he would fall asleep sitting up in the kitchen chair at lunch time for a nap. The way he would drive hs old pickup down the road at 30 mph (in a 55 zone), but have no problem driving his Cadillac down the Interstate at 90. The way he loved my grandmother like she was the only woman in the world after 67 years of marriage.

It’s with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes that I say goodbye to this great man.

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OK, I have a rant that I’ve just got to spout off about.

What is wrong with product manufacturers these days? A few months ago I purchased a new alarm clock. My old one was really bright, and I wanted something that just dimmed more. First off, I was annoyed that you can’t really buy anything fun or classy for an alarm clock. There seem to be two grades, $15 Walmart specials and $300 fancy European alarm clocks. Nothing in between, but that’s not my point.

I bought this alarm clock, RCA or something. Had most of the features I wanted, even if it is kind of ugly. $15 bucks. I plugged it in, and it automatically set the time for me! How cool is that? Not that this is knew technology, but I think it’s the first alarm clock I’ve had that just picked up the NIST signal and set itself.

While the Alarm Clock is great, I also acquired two other home appliances recently. An over the range Microwave and a Coffeemaker. Both of these items were much more expensive than the Alarm Clock, and both have digital clocks, but guess what. Neither sets themselves. So if the power goes out I have to reset the stupid clocks. What is this? 1983?

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This guy built an 1/8th scale 1936 John Deere “D” that runs and drives. Wished my Dad used the Internet, he would think this is the coolest.

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In what could end up being the corporate blunder of the year, Walmart has blown off the video company that has been taping it’s corporate meetings for the last 30 years.

Flagler Productions Inc., a small video production company, had been taping all of the goings on at Walmart for 30 years based on a verbal contract. In 2006 Walmart decided to dump Flagler for a newer, glitzier production company. There was no written contract concerning the content that had been recorded, so Flagler offered to sell it back to Walmart for $145 million. Walmart countered with an offer of $500,000 because they didn’t think anyone else would be interested in the footage… appearantly they were wrong. Since Walmart wasn’t interested, Flagler is now allowing public access to the archive, for a price.

Now there are videos of Walmart execs in drag on youtube and who knows how much more shennaniganary. Lawyers are climbing all over themselves looking for evidence to use in court cases involving the retail behemoth. This is not only an embarrassment for Walmart, it’s a potentially costly blunder. How could they possibly let someone have this content without making a reasonable attempt at negotiating a purchase?

In a way I feel bad for Walmart, the silly things that went on in their corporate meetings and picnics shouldn’t really qualify as evidence for lawsuits, or be a basis for criticizing a corporate mentality. If they want to have some fun and do something crazy behind closed doors - who cares? Guess they should have ponied up and bought the footage - might have saved them money and headaches in the long run.

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Maybe it’s just me, but this headline seemed a bit ironic. Immigration agents raid Pilgrim’s Pride plants

388 years have passed since those original Illegal Immigrants landed at Plymouth Rock, but it doesn’t look like their tactics have changed any. They are still supporting those who want to escape oppressive regimes and look for opportunity in the “New World”.

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Doc Rampage has posted an interesting comment on the idea of the concept of a multiverse in Science Fiction writing.

How can there be drama when you know that by hypothesis of the story, every good thing that happens is accompanies by an infinite number of grotesquely evil things that happen? How can you even have moral choices? Sure, the hero can save this damsel, but then he is condemning some other damsel in the possible world where he didn’t save her. Why not let his own world be the one where she is not saved, thereby letting some other him in another world live happily ever after and taking the tragic consequences himself? Wouldn’t that be the noble action?

In a multiverse where everything that is possible is real, nothing real matters.

I wanted to make a couple comments on this idea. First, I disagree that in a multiverse nothing really matters. In fact, all that really matters in any story is what the author chooses to tell us. In John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War the author uses the concept of a multiverse to explain interstellar travel. Someone has invented a device that pushes a starship into another universe. With the concept that there are an infinite number of possibilities, there exists a universe where the the ship will appear in the desired location, and the story continues following that character. There is little chance that through this method the ship, or character, would ever return to their ‘original’ universe since the concept is that only a nearby universe can be jumped to. The more time that goes by, the greater the divergence is between universes, and the less likely it is you will jump back to the one you came from.

While this concept took me a while to get my head around, I think it is a great use of the idea of alternative universes. In fact, when you really think about it, any fiction is already a world of infinite possibilities. An author creates their own universe based on the decisions they make. In the example of the damsel, hero and train, the author creates the world where the damsel is saved or lost - the only thing that ultimately matters is the story that’s put down to the paper.

Lawrence-Watt Evans, whose essay On Infinite Possibilities Doc references in his post, discusses the folly of attempting to write a story that diverges from any particular point in history (past, present or future).

Choosing one particular variant is all very well for fictional purposes, I suppose–but for me, it turns the story into pure fantasy. I have nothing against fantasy, but most alternate histories strike me as a rather drab sort of fantasy. That’s why I haven’t written very many, and why I declined invitations to submit stories to Mike Resnick’s other “Alternate” anthologies.

Using this reasoning, doesn’t all fiction become ‘fantasy’? Isn’t every story based on the concept of taking a character from a starting point and creating a world he or she lives in?

Sounds to me like the difficulty comes when an author attempts to create their own universe, at least one that is predicated on the one we live in. A story that is set in the world we live in, and just focuses on the activities of the characters is fine. Likewise, a story that exists in a world that never is or was connected to ours is also fine, although that is obviously pure fantasy. Otherwise, I don’t see how it matters if there are infinite possibilities, or just the one the author creates. The result is the same - it diverges from ours and becomes a fantasy story.

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