Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare... Or more proof I'm weird.

A while ago I played Red Dead Redemption and, though I admittedly spent more time playing poker and wandering around the wilderness looking for stuff than playing the actual missions, I thought it was one of the better games I had played in a long time. However, far more important, I felt it was one of the best stories that any video game has ever tried to tell with a main character that was very well fleshed out. Possibly the best fleshed out video game character ever.

Why do I say this? John Marston, a former outlaw, forced to hunt his old old gang members to be reunited with his family, was more than just a 3D polygonal thing for me to drive around in a video game. From the very beginning of the game, the personality of John, a very tough man with a softer side that shone through from time to time, was very clear. John was a hard man, vicious when he had to be, but honest and loyal, turning down the offers from prostitutes with a polite but firm, "I'm a married man, ma'am". He wasn't hunting his old friends for any reason but because he had no choice. John would do anything for his family, that was made quite clear.

As the game progressed, John grew beyond the basic shell of a character he started with. He was a hard man, but he had motivations beyond the "save my family" standard, and he made friendships and relationships with the strangest of bedfellows work through a combination of his unerring blunt honesty and his harsh and demanding attitude. He worked with the ranch owner that saved his life (who clearly grew sweet on him over time), grave robbers, snake oil salesmen, sheriffs, marshals, corrupt government officials, and more, never changing in his determination to save his family. As I played the game I grew not only to like John, but to respect him. He was never shy about his past, but had clearly worked hard to become something more. Now he was fighting, tooth and nail, to be sure he could have that back.

Eventually the game did end, and I had played poker and looked for stupid freaking weeds for long enough, so I bid the game adieu and moved on to other frontiers. Still, I was sad to put the game down. I really liked the game, especially the story, and it's hard to not want more of that.

Time passed, then I heard about this new Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare thing, I thought, "Oh cool! Zombies and Red Dead! Could be fun!" And in as much as that, I was dead on. But there was something surprising for me.

Playing the game, hearing John's voice, seeing him interact with his family, brought back a rush of feelings. I realized that, in seeing this video game character, a written fake person, that I had quite literally missed him. That seeing him again, hearing him talk and interact with his family and others, truly brought out a feeling of seeing an old friend again. I'm dead serious, after putting down RDD and thinking I'd never see him again, getting one last real time to see John Marston in action a completely unexpected treat.

It may signal that I'm really insane, but I think it shows just how good the writers were for this game. I missed John Marston, I missed hearing his voice, I missed his aggressive manner of handling his less honest companions, I missed watching him tease his wife and clumsily try to be a good father to his son. I missed his attitude, his smile, and his unending efforts to be a good man in a world out of control.

Now that I've beaten Undead Nightmare I am sad that it's over. I'm losing a friend again. I'm losing John Marsten, and the second time is harder because I really now know what I'm going to miss. John isn't a real person, I can't go find him, or drop him an email. All I can hope is that somehow Rockstar makes another game with John as the main character without screwing everything up, as usually happens.

Goodbye John. I will miss you.

Oh, right, the actual game. As zombie games go, I enjoyed it. Things get really hectic and annoying when zombies get all up in your business, and the first level is a desperate dash to try to find ammunition, but you're blasting away the undead in a myriad of fun settings, you have the opportunity to catch and ride the Four Horses of the apocalypse, and you get to visit, and sometimes kill, all those characters you loved from RDD. It's a great add on to a great game. Visiting with John is just the kind of perk I get worked up about.

Vaccines... Government / Big Pharma conspiracy?

I have heard this particular line of nonsense before, usually from anti-vaxers, but occasionally from well meaning if misinformed people. I mean, really, who doesn't want to mistrust the government? Buncha taxing jerks, and they're in bed with the Big Pharma jerks who want to poke us with expensive needles, right?

First, look at this from the view of the greedy government types. They get money from us via taxes, and boy howdy do they get our money. But that one important prerequisite of getting that money? The people they are taxing have to not only be alive, but live long enough to get some serious cash. And the higher quality of life those people have, the longer they live, the more taxes they pay. So in the view of the greedy government, those vaccines better work really well. Therefore, in this case, it is in the government's best interests to make sure Big Pharma is getting those vaccines to everyone they can.

Now, Big Pharma is clearly in it for the money, right? So they're charging thousands of dollars per dose of vaccine, right? Well, actually, no. If you really want to squeeze all the money you can out of not only America but indeed the entire world, you have to make that vaccine as cheap as possible. A $5 injection is a tiny deal here, but in poverty ridden Africa? If we are really going to reach those millions of potential customers then those vaccines have to be as cheap as humanly possible. And if one pharma company puts out a vaccine cheaper than yours, you scramble to find a cheaper way to get your vaccine made.

Oh no! Cutting corners is a clear sign of shoddy and even dangerous vaccines, right? Did you forget about the greedy government? They want their people alive and taxable, and Big Pharma damn well better keep people alive or the government will remove your funding and give it to the other guys making the cheap yet still effective vaccines. On top of that, cheaper vaccines mean more Americans to tax, so the government is pushing on Big Pharma to cut costs as well.

How does that big pharma government conspiracy sound now? Two huge greedy groups who both benefit from cheaper and more effective vaccines. They may be greedy jerks, but there's no money to be made unless the vaccines work and are affordable.

Again with the personal anecdote ending... My old Capoeira instructor, Gorilla, don't ask, got his PhD in micro biology, or something similar, and got a job with a pharmaceuticaal company shortly thereafter. His job was to find a way to reduce an already cheap vaccine to less than $.05 a dose. Big Pharma reducing costs, not at government behest, but in an effort to make the vaccine so affordable that they could help prevent that disease in as many people as possible. Making money? No. Helping people acoss the globe. That is what the real goal is: saving lives by preventing horrible diseases. You can take that to the bank.

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It's Vaccine Awareness Week!

Hopefully you've either never heard or this or at least heard about it from either sciencebasedmedicine.org or scienceblogs.com/insolence/. See what's going on is there's this Anti-Vaccine/Anti-Science, trying to be polite here, person by the name of Joe Mercola (to whom I will not link for fear of speading his lies) who has dubbed this week the title above in an attempt to bombard the Internet with his misinformation and falsehoods regarding the dangers and efficacy of vaccines. The doctors at SBM and Respectful Insolence decided to mirror that... Guy's idea by trying to spread as much truth about vaccines this week. While I am aware that like three people actually read this blog, I'm still going to throw my hat in the pro-science/pro-evidence side of this little online tussle.

Vaccines work. Want proof? Find me a case of Smallpox. Go ahead and look! I'll wait... Note how the only Smallpox on the planet is frozen in researcher's labs under high security? That there is proof that vaccines work. There's other evidence, but it doesn't get better than Smallpox, a horrifying disease that was completely eradicated by vaccines. If you insist on more proof, SMB and RI both have dozens if not hundreds of posts on vaccine efficacy that you can check out.

Don't vaccines cause autism or something? No, they don't, but if you've heard this there's a good chance it's because of Mercola or Jenny McCarthy by way of Oprah. Not only is this false, but it's the most pernicious attack on science, relying on emotion fueled rants from parents who believe their children were thusly affected by vaccination. Science and studies don't make these parents feel better, and all the evidence in the world won't change the mind of a parent who "knows" what really happened. That Mercola and his ilk use these poor people's tragedies to fuel their weapons is deplorable. Vaccines do not cause autism. Parents beliefs aside, the evidence clearly shows this. Again, SBM and RI have all the information you need.

I implore you to read the evidence about vaccines. Not just from the shrieking people, but also the calm doctors and medical professionals who really are helping people and aren't the "big pharma" schills they are being made out to be.

As a final point, a personal anecdote. My father is having some health issues and can't afford a bout with the flu because he might die from it. Because of this, for the first time in my life, I am getting a flu vaccination. I'm doing this because it might save my father's life. Does this seem reasonable to you? I sure hope so.

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I was wrong again...

A couple posts back I said I'd found and researched the drifting in neutral vs drifting in gear thing and found the latter to be more fuel efficient. Since that post in July I have been testing what i suggested. I went into hypermilling mode and tested using drifting in gear and found that it was good when engine breaking was appropriate, but annoying all the rest of the time because I kept having to hit the gas to maintain speed when normally I would not. Still I stuck with it and got 34.14 MPG after a full tank of gas. Then I switched to drifting in neutral using all the same driving techniques I had before. When I finally got through that tank, found my MPG had improved to 34.94. I'll grant you there isn't any statistical rigor here and any number of influences might have affected my results, but nearly a full MPG more says a lot to me. So I have to say that while technically the drifting in gear is more fuel efficient, in practice you may find it to either not make much difference, or even make your overall performance worse. I'm going to stick with my tried and true thank you.

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A delicious mistake

So after running out of the lovely tea/care package from my beloved friends in Boston, I bit the damn bullet and went to Teavana. A clever salesperson upsold the shit out of me, and I spent way more money than I wanted too. But the tea! I got several types of tea, but far and away the best is the Oolong tea.

You may never heard of this, but there is a type of Oolong tea that is collected from tall trees by trained monkeys. Really. It's called monkey picked Oolong. Really. It's supposed to be great, but it sounded really stupid to me.

Then I tried some. Holy crap was I wrong. This tea is just fantastic. The aroma, the flavor, everything is amazing. Is it worth the money I spent? That's arguable, but was it a good mistake? Yes. A great mistake. And because of that clever salesperson, I won't run out of this stuff for at least a year. Yum.

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The Ballad of Drinking Tea at Work

As you may or may not know, I am a tea drinker. I really dislike coffee, and I don't care if you think me weird for it. Be it black, green, oolong, white, or something in the middle, I like most teas. Obviously this should be my drink of choice at work then, and it is, but there is, as always, a snag.
Everyone knows that tea bags are how you drink tea. In this country. In more civilized countries, people make their teas from loose leaf tea, which is, to any tongue, far superior to tea bags, known as "tampon tea" by the Brits. I, having tasted both, can say with great certainty that loose leaf is better... Provided it is brewed correctly.
How hard can it be to brew tea? Pour hot water over leaves, steep, drink! Right.
Nerd powers engage!
Tea, depending on style, likes to be brewed at a specific temperature. Each tea may have some wiggle room on temp, but black tea likes water just off a boil and green tea likes water closer to 175 degrees. Easy enough, right? Well, the only access to hot water I have is the crappy coffee machine at work, and while I haven't been so nerdy as to bring an instant read in to find the exact temp of the water, I know it's much shy of boiling. For green tea, that's fine. For black, not so much.
Why not bring in an electric kettle? Because that's a fire hazard and I couldn't leave it in the break room anyway since someone would definitely steal it.
So here's what I'm stuck with: draw water from coffee hot water tap, place chopstick in water to prevent superheating water, place mug in microwave, heat for 2 minutes or until boiling, put loose leaf tea into French press, pour water over tea, steep 3-4 minutes, sugar to taste, enjoy tea. I do this three times a day, sometimes more. And let's not forget that oolong tea, a favorite of mine, likes water a couple minutes off a boil, so that becomes more complicated.
The more tea astute of you might also note that using the water from the coffee machine might not be the optimum choice since some of the oxygen has been boiled out of the water. To you I say what Teddy Rosevelt may have once said, "You do the best you can with what you got where you are."
Getting a decent cup of tea might be annoying, but dammit, a good cuppa is the best way to start the day.
Today's post brought to you by the Corporation for Stuff You Probably Don't Care About.

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An error old...

I'm not obsessed with hypermilling lately, what with gas being semi reasonably priced and all, but I am obsessed with making sure I at least know what's going on with hypermilling, and beause of this I am forced to make a correction about my previous hypermilling post.
In my post I said that coasting in neutral can save you gas in some situatuons. It turns out that I was wrong. Logically it makes sense that if your car is idling rather than in gear that your car has lower RPMs and is therefore saving gas. However, after some research, I have determined that to be wrong.
The truth is that when in gear and going down a hill in a fuel injected, stick shift car your engine senses the throttle position and RPMs and put your engine into an extremely low fuel injecting state, one that is, oddly enough, using less gas than just being in idle. Rolling down a hill in gear without using the throttle is therefore more fuel efficient than coasting in neutral.
Frankly this sounds very counter intuitive to me, but I checked a dozen or so sources, and while a lot of people believe that coasting in neutral is better, the only people with actual proof are the gear heads who say otherwise.
So I was wrong! I don't know how much difference in terms of MPG this is, but I can say for certain that it is greater than zero, so it could be worth while.

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