Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Observing The Can’t of Thieves

I ran into an interesting gaming scenario and real life teaching experience with my daughter, at the laundromat of all places. Rogues, thieves and con men are pretty much all the same. They have been for centuries. Techniques never change but the goods and the goals do. The good ones are never spotted, but the bad one stand out.
In real life and in gaming, we tend to gloss over the foolish ones while imagining the dangerous ones are around every corner. The only difference between the two is a poor spot check.
Two guys came in to the laundromat and instantly set off my spidey sense. Not in a physical way, but they were clearly up to no good. I called my daughter close and asked her to observe them.
I had her text me her thoughts about them. Silent communication, whether gestures or texting works to the advantage of the user, no matter the setting or year.
  1. They were loud and swore around kids, like they wanted to be tough.
  2. The looked the same. Bald and wearing straw hats. Sneakers but no socks. Shorts and T-shirts. Sunglasses, worn on the hat by one and around the neck by the other. 
  3. They were not identically dressed, but very similar.
  4. They made eye contact while speaking everyone, except children. They ignored children.
  5. They looked in all the machines.
  6. They said not so nice things, but smiled the whole time.
  7. They went into the kids play area, the bathroom and peeked in the office.
  8. They never stopped moving or talking.
I wasn’t just me, these two stood out to my 10 year old.
They waited until the attendant hung up a sign saying “Back in 20 minutes” then loudly proclaimed that they lost $4.25 in one of the machines and wanted to speak to the owner. My daughter thought it was funny that he put 17 quarters in a machine but didn’t notice it wasn't working. It was also odd that the price was 5 bucks. I shrugged and asked her to keep watching.
When the attendant came back from break, Guy Number One asked if she was the owner and explained the problem. She offered to pull the coin box from the offending machine and refund the his money. Oddly, the coin box was empty. Guy Number Two took over and “The Owner” desperately searched for the offending machine.
What they missed was the attendant had empted the coin boxes before her break. They were not going to find any machine full of “their money”. Having failed, the men switched places and roles to create confusion.
The game continued for a while, until it was clear the tactic wasn’t working.
A loud conversation about going next door for Chinese food started. Number One suggested lunch and Number Two shouted it down since he was once refunded for receiving bad Chinese food at a restaurant.
A challenge was offered and accepted. They asked the attendant if the place next door was any good and she offered an opinion, but they hardly listened.
The two men left, but this time switching roles. Number One, the one who proposed the restaurant, loudly proclaimed he would not stand for bad food. Guess what was going to happen next door?
Pick a century, any century. Con men of every era use the same tactics. Han Solo, Sawyer from Lost and The Grey Mouser all pretty much operate the same underneath the hood.
Here are the tools of the trade:
  • Work in groups.
  • Have a cover story ready.
  • Have a backup plan, hopefully one that matches a cover story.
  • Be outwardly friendly, but forcefully offended and easily aggrieved.
  • Look tough, but back down with grace if necessary.
  • Use respect. Use more than the normal amount of respect to elevate the self-esteem of the mark.
  • Dress neatly with flash and style, but be similar to your associates so physical descriptions are easily confused.
  • Appear to trust other people, so they will extend the same level of trust.  
  • Case the joint, the whole place not just the obvious areas.
  • Look for treasure everywhere. Anything worth anything at all is treasure.
  • Never ask for the whole enchilada, ask for less. This way you can haggle with a mark to part them from their money.

Monday, June 1, 2015

All the right things, in three parts. Item two.

Image by LearningLark at Flicker.com. CC license.
Years ago, I worked in a bookstore called “The Paper Cutter”. As a receiving clerk, one of my duties was to field phone calls. One particular type of call really bothered me.

Caller: “Do you have the Cliff-notes for Fahrenheit 451?”

Me: “Lord, no! Do you know what that book is about?” Caller: “No. You read it?” Me: “Of course.” Caller: “Can you tell me about it?” Me: “Just read it. Seriously, if you come in before my shift is over, I’ll buy you a copy.”
I was good to my word and purchased that title for a few people who came in before 5 PM. I wish more people loved reading as much I as I do.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Incantato, il mio vecchio amico Alsamixer!

If you use Duolingo on a chromebook, you may have microphone problems. I tinkered around with the settings and chromebooks do not allow websites to access your microphone and camera by default. Change that by going into settings and Privacy.
Now for the surprise. This didn’t completely fix my problem. I did a little more searching and found that Alsamixer is the key. Press crtl+alt+t to pop open a new crosh tab. Type shell and enter.

Bamb! Alsamixer almost like linux. That shouldn’t be a surprise. One issue I did encounter was the function keys wouldn’t work even when I used the function key. Not all is lost. For some reason the search key needs to be pressed to invoke the function keys.
No problem. Press it with your desired function key. Escape to exit. 
I like Duoling to keep up on my Spanish, but it occurs to me that it is also useful for my horrible Italian. Duolingo lets you select multiple languages at the same time. I have no idea if there is a limit to the number, but I thought that I would stick to the two I know pretty well. 

New chromebooks are much better than the one I have. I'm going to start shopping for a new one soon. 

All the right things, in three parts. Item one.

I was on the hunt for a book last weekend. It has been so long since I bought a physical book. We ventured out to Barnes and Nobles and I tried to find something I would enjoy. As tried to browse, the kids were hounding me for books for them. I couldn’t say “no” to them and said so. I blew double what I budgeted for my book and I was lucky it was that little.
I seem to recall a trip to a local five and dime called “The Tec” on Main Street, where my parent’s had this same conversation with me. My dad said “I can’t say no to a book for you.” There was no mark language back then, but “for you” might as well have been underlined and bolded.
Somethings are important. Instilling a love of reading in your kids is one of them, and I am glad that my parent’s gave that to me.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Markers

This morning, I passed the time with some sketches using Tul Markers.

These markers are labeled “fine” but I find them a little fat. That is ok, this is my first attempt with using markers.
For my first subject, I picked a jaguar like creature from the zoo. All and all, I was pretty happy with the results.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

#tbt – Astronomy Cast Episode 1

Today’s post is for Throw Back Thursday. I decided to take a listen to AstronomyCast’s first episode. After the first few minutes, Pamela and Fraser catch their groove. It is surprising how fast they found “the formula” and established the sound and style of the show.


Timely, as New Horizons approaches Pluto. It is a long way off, at least the way I drive, but surface details are becoming obvious.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Destiny Done…

Well, that day has come. I have completed all the missions and tasks with my Titan in Destiny.


As of right now, I do not have PSN, House of Wolves, or The Dark Below. I do plan on adding the expansion packs but I am not sure when.

Destiny’s delineation between PvP and PvE is nice. I find PvP to be annoying and Destiny’s model allows me to safely ignore it. I hate being pwn’d by a 12-year-old and Destiny lets me avoid it.
The style of stories shifts as the player progresses, and the planet system neatly ties them all together. The scenes on each world are really nice, except for The Moon. For whatever reason, the grey tones leave me with the impression that the map is more open than it really is. So far, I have killed myself by driving off the map more times than I can count. I could use a few more Vex encounters, but hey, that is what expansion is for. I can’t wait for more Vex. The Legionnaires and their cohorts are interesting and present new challenges. I also love the fact that Venus is presented as a very 1940s, swamp-like planet.
I’m torn. Destiny costs $50 bucks. I am fine with that, however, to continue receiving new challenges, you need PSN, PSPlus, and the expansion packs. That pushes the cost up to $135 for a year or $11.25 a month.

This is where I am torn. I am actually very happy to play a game for less than $12 a month. In addition to great new content and multiplayer, you are free to create 3 characters per profile on your PS4. All three of my kids, plus my wife and I can play this game. This is not true of most online games, normally we would need an account for each player.

As the father of three children, I have to say I find PS4’s limitation of 16 profiles to be spectacular. When I go to a hockey game or baseball game, all the tickets come in “4 Packs”, which sucks when you need 5. The pricing for the 5th ticket is pretty cheap, but the rigamarole of ordering is obnoxious. That doesn’t happen with 16 profiles, which is very generous.

I do find the PSN email requirements for children to be vexing (see what I did there?). I am not sure I want to arm my 10-year-old with an email address. As a happy medium, I created that email account but did not give my child the password. Sony needs to step up and create a more protective model.

I believe that the main hurdles are not created by Bungie, but by Sony. An internet-connected device that requires a separate monthly purchase to connect to some types of data is stupid. I hate it on my phone and I hate it on my games. Of course, Bungie does charge for new content, but that is offered a la carte. I don’t have to do it and still be happy.
So to wrap up, the plus/minus list for Destiny 

Pluses:
1. Inventive Storylines.
2. Nice gameplay.
3. Multiple expansions.
4. PvP or PvE, your choice.
5. Bungie’s website.

Minuses:
1. Sony’s PSN and PSPlus system.
2. Only three classes.
3. Lack of a manual.

On the whole, I really enjoyed Destiny. I can’t say I have seen every detail and facet, but all and all it is gratifying.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Nextbook NX785QC8G Review

My son recently purchased the NX785QC8G Nextbook at Walmart for $69.00.

This is a budget 8″ tablet, the screen is a smidgen under 8″.
I snapped a quick picture, sorry f9r the blow quality. The glass on this product is super high gloss and easily collect fingerprints, smudges, etc. However, the device feel solid and is equipped with a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a mini USB port, a micro HDMI port and an micro SD slot.
The Nextbook has 5.5 GB of memory which is on the light side for a game crazy child. My son found tht he didn’t enough room to install more games. We inserted a 4 GB micro SD card and discovered the tablet happily dropped downloaded apps on to the card by default. Nice feature. His only issue now is to maintain enough space for downloading and installing. Since he is living on just a few megs of space, there are days when he can’t install items without rebooting. Presumably, he is running with a lot junk open and the cache eats his free storage space.
The camera is so-so. It is on par with an old cell phone. The single speaker works as you would expect, but found that the volume is more than adequate.
At the end of the day, I can’t say this great tab but for $69 it is very reasonable.