At first, I didn’t think anything of it. Luther was a very busy guy and it wasn’t unusual to have a difficult time getting hold of him. But, as time went on, I started to wonder. Eventually, I came to a very sad realization; Luther had decided to not be friends with me anymore. And instead of discussing it with me, he’d simply ghosted.
We live in the internet age. I’ve made and lost friends with people I’ve never met in real life. Luther was different. Luther and I have been friends for about 5 years. And, we met in real life long before we talked online. We met through a local social group.
Luther and I were pretty close. In fact, he was one of the people I felt closest to in our group. Our politics were very different. I’m conservative, he’s liberal. I’m LDS (Mormon,) he grew up in Utah as a “non-Mormon.” But, Luther was a good person and we hit it off well. If anything our differences gave us interesting things to talk about.
Luther eventually married Lacey, another member of our social group. I’ve known Lacey even longer than I’ve known Luther. They are a great couple and two of my favorite people in the world.
We all eventually drifted away from the social group that brought us together. But, I remained friends with Luther and Lacey. More with Luther than his wife. He started a Community group focused on the poor and homeless. It’s an important work and I was proud to call Luther my friend. He was an inspiration. He maintained a fulltime job in IT while also devoting countless hours to his homelessness advocacy.
While, homelessness is an issue that I care about, I didn’t really get engaged with Luther’s group. We all have a limited amount of time. While I respected the important work he was doing, I focused on other interests.
But, Luther and I still talked regularly. We occasionally went to lunch. I reached out to Luther when I had questions about some of the areas he was so involved with.
Then, two of my daughters found themselves homeless. One because she was fleeing an domestic abuse situation, another because she opted out of state custody at 18. She could have stayed in foster care and the state would have funded school, housing, etc, but she insisted she’d “figure it out.” Well, figuring it out meant that she was homeless a week after the court date.
I reached out to Luther for help. I knew he was in Denver conducting a national conference for his advocacy group. He was even busier than normal. In the meantime I was able to get my daughters the help they needed to be off the streets, at least temporily, but they needed to get plugged into the social services available to the homeless. Luther was too busy to get back to my texts or facebook PM messages, but I’d seen him this busy before.
One of my daughters was in Park City, UT. I saw Luther was holding a local meeting in Park City. This seemed like a perfect chance to get him and my daughter together so she could start getting the information she was going to need.
I didn’t really consider the situation unusual. Luther was the leader of his organization and he was the primary point of contact. I felt bad about pestering him, but he was the organization. I drove out to Park City and picked up my daughter and took her to the meeting. We met up with Luther and several homeless advocates in Park City. Overall, I was a very relieved father. I felt my daughter was starting to meet people who could really help her.
It was shortly after this that I realized that I could no longer see Luther’s posts on Facebook. I sent a couple PM’s.Then a sicking feeling started in my stomach. I tried calling Luther. No answer. I tried texting him. Nope.
Finally, I reached out to his wife, Lacey
LACEY: Hi, what’s up?
ME: We’ve been friends a long time. Feel free to be straight with me. Did I do something to tick off your husband? He blocked me on Facebook and doesn’t answer my calls. At first I thought it was how crazy busy he was in February. But, then I realized I can’t see any of his posts. I have no idea.
LACEY: Ok, to be straight with you–your incessant messaging and calls are inappropriate and creepy and that’s why he blocked you.
ME: I appreciate you letting me know.
LACEY: yep
ME: I didn’t realize. If you get a chance, or feel inclined, please let him know I apologize. Any chance to salvage that friendship, do you think?
LACEY: That ship has sailed Rodney. But I’ll tell him you apologized.
ME: Well, separate from any of the homeless advocacy, I’ll miss being his friend. What’s that mean for our friendship?
(Long pause. . . )
ME: Another ship that sailed? Well, again, I very much appreciate you explaining this. I apologize to you as well. Had to have been uncomfortable having someone creeping on your husband.
If either of you are ever interested in rekindling the friendship, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You’re still two of my favorite people in the world.
You can let Luther know I’ll be withdrawing from any involvement in the advocay group. What he’s doing is too important for me to be a distraction. Thanks again, my friend.
LACEY: Ok thanks, that sounds good Rodney. Take care.
And that’s how a five and six year friendship ends. I’m reminded of a line from the Bette Midler movie Beaches,
Well, what the hell did you know? Did you know how bad things were for me? No, because you wouldn’t even open my letters. If you had even answered on, just one! Told me what a jerk I was, anything! But you didn’t. You took your friendship away without even discussing it with me.
I’ve gone back through my facebook messages, my texts looking for clues. Obviously, I was annoying Luther. And as his friend, had he said, “Rodney, you’re being a jerk,” or “Rodney, I’m feeling a little creeped out here,” you know what I would have done? Probably the same thing you would do when you inadvertantly annoy your friends. You’d back off. You’d apologize. You’d try to make it right.
I’m left to wonder, were we friends? Did I misunderstand five years of lunches, emails, political discussions, talks about raising kids, his wedding: did I misunderstand our friendship?
I’ll never know. Lacey made it pretty clear she’s not interested in going into any more detail, and sadly not interested in our friendship either. You can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t want to be friends with you. So, that’s the end. It’s easy to say, move on. And, of course, that’s the right course.
But, I miss my friends.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
I like to make people laugh. I spent hours and hours on the phone with people. And while humor is difficult to do on a conference call, I will typically try to keep the conversation light.
Today, was not a call for doing so. I didn’t try out any funny one-liners, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about the role of humor in the workplace.
I was part of a meeting today that spanned four states, and three time zones. My boss was on it; all his direct reports, his boss, his boss’ boss, and several people from other departments.
We have a big client presentation coming up and this was our internal meeting to prepare for it. I’m the IT guy. I have one slide in a deck of 30. I’m there mostly to speak to my one slide and answer any questions about IT or outages.
There were none of those questions. And we didn’t get to my slide. We spent a lot of time going over statistical reports and metrics. They weren’t my metrics, so I didn’t need to be active in the conversation.
However, the discussion became tense at times. We are all on the same team and we are all working toward the same goal. But, there are areas that we can improve. Time was spent going over them.
I very much care about the metrics since they are a key indicator of how well we are delivering on the partnership with our client. But, not having an active role, I wasn’t expected to speak up.
If you’ve read this blog for very long at all, you know that I have pretty severe ADHD. In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to have a five minute conversation and have simultaneously held a half dozen side conversations in my head.
If I don’t interupt you while you’re speaking, realize it’s not because I haven’t figured out what you are about to say, and what I will say in response and what Bob might have said as well. It’s simply that I’ve had to train myself to SHUT UP NOW.
Oh, I had great ideas today. They didn’t necessarily relate to the meeting, because I didn’t compile the data, so much of it was a mystery to me. But, I had great, great ideas and things to say that would have added to the meeting.
I said none of them.
I made one comment late in the meeting about a technical issue from last quarter.
Yes, Rodney, but that’s no longer relevant since we’ve had a full quarter to recover.
Okay, back to SHUTTING UP.
When I’m running the meeting, I can control the flow of the conversation. I can decide to drop in a joke or kid one of my team mates.
When, your boss’ boss’ boss is running the call? That’s a great time to practice not adding on or introducing a little levity. Just keep your mouth shut.
I didn’t used to be this smart.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
PLAY BALL!
Baseball season started today. You might have missed it. Not everyone is a baseball fan. Baseball is the Country music of the sports world.
I like all kinds of music.
Even Country?
Except Country.
Like Country music, baseball’s fanbase is passionate. Over 47,000 fans jammed Safeco Field in Seattle tonight, the home of the Mariners.
Seattle is about 1000 miles from Pleasant Grove, Utah. But, thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I got to listen to tonights game. Felix Hernandez, King Felix to the fans, started the game and went 5 1/3 innings before he reached his pitch count of 81 pitches.
Nelson Cruz, the hottest hitter for the past 3 years, smacked a homerun.
The big story was the return of Ichiro, the future Hall of Fame player that came up with the Mariners 16 years ago is back in Seattle patrolling right field. He’s not the player he was, but then who among us is?
Edwin Diaz the Mariners closer came in to start the 9th inning trying to save a 2-1 Mariners lead. He made it exciting with a hit batsman, a balk and eventually three stikeouts to close out the Mariners first win of the season.
Like I do every year at this time, I miss Dave Niehaus, the long time Mariners announcer. He was the first Mariner in the Hall of Fame, going in as a broadcaster.
The radio announcers are definitely capable and bring the game to life through their retelling of the action on the field. But, they don’t compare to Dave. Can’t wait for the first grandslam to hear them pay homage to Niehaus’ “Get out the rye bread and the mustard, Grandma. It’s grand salami time!”
I also think back on my first Mariners games nearly 40 years ago. I remember them because my dad took me. I never did figure out if he loved baseball or just wanted his son to. I know he hated the old Kingdome. It was a pretty ugly and just bad baseball stadium. But, he went and took me.
I didn’t really develop a love of the game until later when I started taking my own kids to the ballpark. Now? Well, now I’m hopeless. I can cite way more statistics than you would care to listen to. I can explain the double-switch and why the Mariners never run it. I can explain the infield fly rule, but it will take a while. I can even tell you a funny trivia question about how a team can get a triple play without any of their players touching the ball. (It’s great, but a little geeky.)
The Mariners won tonight. But, history says that they will eventually fade down the stretch. Seattle is the only city with a Major League Baseball team that has never been to the World Series.
But, for the next 161 games, I’ll be glued to the modern radio (interent) listening to men 1000 miles and 40 years away.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Not a one of them was telling the truth. In fact, the last guy, George McEwan was the biggest liar of them all. In fact he had a reputation as a liar. Monday night he proved once again what a big liar he was.
It’s my favorite event of the year. The Utah’s Biggest Liar’s competition was Monday night. In past years, I’ve been the MC and a finals judge. This year I judged the preliminaries. My seat at the judges table for the finals was given to an even bigger liar. A man named Bill Lepp is known for his tall tales all across the country. This being the 10th Anniversary of the Utah Biggest Liar’s competition, Bill came from West Virginia to both judge and tell a whopper of his own at the end of the evening.
If you’ve never been to a Liar’s competition, you might be tempted to think it’s just a slightly different version of a debate between politicians. It’s a lot more entertaining than that. And unlike the political speeches, an award winning lie has to at least have a grain of truth.
A winning story in a liar’s competition has to start out firmly based in reality and then slowly (but not too slowly) turn into a tall tale. Tellers have 6 minutes to spin their story.
I knew all six competitors. I’d heard them all tell stories over the years. At the end of the competition I had a pretty good idea who would be the top three finishers. I figured that George would walk away with his 5th Golden Shovel.
His stories are always tightly written with clever wordplay and build to a satisfying conclusion. Monday night was no different. He started talking about how he hated cats. By the end of six minutes, he and his feline enemy were flying through the air in a trajectory that had no basis in reality.
After the last teller, the hard part starts. The judges have to narrow it down to three winners. This is, of course done behind closed doors. During the deliberations, Bill Lepp got up to tell a story. He’s a master. His story flowed conversationally. He took back to his elementary school in rural West Virginia. He introduced us to interesting people who may or may not have been real people. He described one particular schoolmate who defided the teachers and description.
The kid ended up living in the rafters of the cafeteria. And listening, you might think, “Well, it could have happened like that.”
And that was the biggest difference between Bill Lepp and the six very talented story tellers. George told us a lie. We thanked him for it. In fact he won the people’s choice award. but, it was a definite story and by the end, we knew it was a lie. Bill, on the other hand, told us a story. At any point in the story we couldn’t neessarily point to an obvious lie. But by the end, we knew we’d been deceived. And we appreciated it. The other tellers took us to the land fo the impossible. Bill stopped just short of the land of the impossible and left us in the land of the highly, highly improbable.
If you are ever in Utah on the last Monday before April 1st, you should plan on stopping by the Orem Public Library. Go to the storytelling wing. You’ll have a great time. Just don’t believe anything anyone tells you.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Our Window was perfect.
We camped on the sand dunes. To the East we could see the lights of Meadow and Fillmore trapped between the Rockie Mountains and the concrete river that was I15. To the West we could see all the way to Nevada. It was just on the other side of the horizon a couple hundred miles away.
The landscape couldn’t have been more bleak. Utah has it’s own unique beauty. If Washington is a woman all dressed up for a night on the town, Utah is a makeup-free woman with sun bleached hair. It had taken me a lot of years to appreciate the beauty of the desert.
Looking across the barren landscape we might have been on the moon or Mars. We were here with a group of boy scouts to visit two unique features that seemed as out of place here as a Starbucks in the Amazon.
After pitching our tents on the sand, we loaded back in the vehicles and headed down the non-descript dirt road. “Turn left at the fence” was the directions we’d been given. Another mile and some twists and turns finally brought us to a sign stating,
Lave Tubes 2 Miles
We turned off the gravel road and dodged mud puddles and deep ruts. The other leader’s SUV acted as scout for my 15 passenger van. I didn’t so much follow him as use him for a guage. If he went right and seemed to bog down, I went to the left.
We finally arrived at our destination. A collection of vehicles parked at the end of the road at the base of a hill with an impossible track leading up the side of it.
Everybody out, boys. We’re there.
Other than the hill behind us, the rock and sagebrush looked no different than the land we had driven past for the past several miles.
Watch your step. The lava tubes come up on your pretty quickly.
And then, like a opening to the underworld, the sand and sparse grass fell away to reveal a hole in the ground. The tubes are anywhere from 15 to 50 feet in diameter. Remnants of a past that was much hotter and much more violent.
I’ve taken a half dozen groups to the lava tubes over the years. They still surprise me everytime. At one point they open up to nearly a small valley. It is like you’re Frodo walking into Mordor. There’s nothing to see, and there’s more not to see around each corner.
Even though the tubes literally have one enterance and one exit, it’s impossible to get lost, we insisted the boys pair up and stay behind the leader and in front of the sweeper. It’s not Disneyland. Do it wrong and someone could twist an ankle, or worse tumble over an edge. We climbed over the rocks. Me and my sore knee limbed along far behind the boys who jumped from rock to rock.
After several hours, we left the lava tubes and headed back to our campsite where we’d left trailer with the gear. The boys took turns using it as a changing room to get into swimming suits. We hooked up the trailer and headed off down another dirt road. We rolled across cattle gates and past disinterested cows, familiar with the comings and goings of visitors in this otherwise deserted corner of Utah’s desert.
We pulled up to a simple pole rail fence defining a rustic parking lot, occupied with 2 cars and 4 trucks. There was no toll booth, or ticket taker, just a simple collection bin marked
Donations Welcome
The farmer who owns the land, simply makes it available to whomever wants to make the trek. The hot springs are a pool about 20 feet in diameter. It’s deep, descending deeper than boys holding their breath are comfortable going. The couples already there just smiled as the bosy jumped into the warm water. The other leader quickly jumped in as well. I opted to play lifeguard. We had a two hour drive home, and no amount of playing in the water was worth driving in cold wet clothes.
As I sat on one of the rocks that did for makeshift benches, I wrote. And I noticed the survival bracelet that my daughter gave me as a present a couple years earlier. I noticed something odd about the compass. It was pointed in the wrong direction. Sure, it wasn’t a great compass, but it was seriously off.
I thought about the implications of a compass that wouldn’t point North. Better no compass than one that is wrong. I took the bracelet off and realized my mistake. Well, not exactly a mistake, but I realized why the compass was off.
The striker for the flint and steel typically rests right next to the compass when the bracelet is on my wrist. So, the tool is accurate, but it requires the user to understand the principles and then be willing to remove it to use it.
Yeah, lots of metaphors in that simple little survival bracelet.
Anyway, that’s what I did with my weekend. I hope yours was equally as enjoyable.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
It’s all over the news today, Elon Musk, the visionary that will someday possibly lead us to Mars, if only to retrieve his Tesla, just deleted his Facebook page. And he also deleted the pages for SpaceX and Tesla. Apparently he did it in response to a request around the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
If you aren’t familiar with Cambridge Analytica, it is a company that helps its clients use data, mostly from social media. Really? It’s a Republican leaning research company that wants to influence social media in favor of Conservatives.
What they did “wrong” was that they gathered a bunch of data about you and 50 million of your closest Facebook friends. They did it by posting a “survey” during the presidential campaign. If you took the survey, it asked if you wanted to share the results with Facebook. If you said yes, it posted to your wall and then took a look at who your friends were.
We don’t know the extend of what C.A. did with the data. But, many people are feeling betrayed. It’s like Facebook expected you to read the User Agreement and understand that “all your base are belong to us.” Seriously, anytime you click the “Yes” button to post results to Facebook, it’s going to expose you to this type of “hacking.”
Evil Republicans?
Not really. Before anyone turns this into more of a partisan attack than it is now, realize that Obama’s team used a very similar technique in 2012. In fact, Facebook figured out what they were doing (harvesting data about friends, likes, pages, etc) but, they were cool with it because they agreed with the effort to reelect President Obama.
Even though both sides are doing it, is it bad?
That’s a tough question for me to answer. I watched the internet revolution happen. I was at Microsoft for much of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. I’ve been involved with IT security in some way or other for decades.
Here’s my personal take on this: ALL DATA IS COMPROMISED
Period.
I live my online life assuming that everything is visible. Security is like placing a screen to divert water in a creek. If I use a screen with small openings, I can divert a good portion of the water away from my portion of the creek bank. Can I divert all of the water (attacks?) Nope. Any system online is vulernable. You can get better screens, and that’s critical. But, don’t assume that it’s perfect.
Ever since the Patriot Act passed over a decade ago, the US Government has had pretty much unfettered access to your online life. What keeps the majority of people safe is “the herd.” In other words, as an individual , you aren’t very interesting to the government.
You are interesting to hackers and if you click links in email from unknown senders, you’re going to have your identify hacked. So, definitely we need to protect ourselves, but we are not going to be safe.
So, let’s talk about Facebook. The data from your Facebook account, the personal information like name/password/etc. is worth about $5 on the Dark Web. That’s not a lot. Because honestly, Facebook doesn’t have much personal data about you. Your bank information is much more valuable to a hacker, of course. It’s why your bank has more robust security than Facebook.
Should you #deleteFacebook because of this latest “hack”?
No. If Facebook has value for you, keep using it. Many of you are reading this post via Facebook. How do I know? Because, WordPress (my blogging platform) and Facebook share large amounts of data about people using the two platforms. Your data is already out there.
Now, if Facebook provides you no value, then sure, delete it. That’s why Musk deleted his pages. He admitted he doesn’t personally use Facebook and his companies don’t advertise on Facebook. And he thought the pages looked “lame.”
We like to think we are safe online. We aren’t. Your company knows what sites you went to. Your ISP knows what sites you visited. The sites you visit know what other sites you visit. Much of your digital life is already online.
Keep yourself safe, but unless you are going to move to a cabin in the woods with a wood stove and no electricity, you are not going to prevent your personal information seeping through that screen.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
I knew what was wrong. I could fix it myself. I bought the parts to fix it myself. Instead I paid hundreds of dollars for someone else to fix it. And I thank God I did. . .Literally.
EDIT: I tried explaining how an alternator works. I can replace one, I just apparently don’t understand how they work. I’ve deleted the inaccurate description and offer this very succinct description by my friend Nathan Stoker:
“The only thing in the car that doesn’t run on 12V DC are the spark plugs and they are still DC…… it’s called an alternator because it uses induction windings (magnet passing by a coil of wires causes the electrons to shift back and forth). 2 diodes inside the alternator actually convert it to DC before it leaves the alternator.
For it to be AC the voltage would just oscillate positive and negative. because of the diodes (one way voltage valve) power circulates in one direction like a battery.
Some mechanics liken the battery to the heart and the alternator to the lungs. While air is technically supplied by the lungs it uses the battery for distribution.”
I would say, “Yeah, that’s what I meant,” but I don’t want to lie. Thanks for the assist Nathan. Now, on with the story.
An alternator is a part in your car engine. You’re probably familiar with the car battery. Maybe you’ve had to jump a friend’s car. We all know that “red goes on positive – black goes on negative.” The battery’s main job is to juice the starter. The fact that the lights work, is nice, but there are times the lights will work but the battery is too low to run the starter. And, once your car gets running, you could remove the battery. I wouldn’t recommend it, and you’d have to complete the circuit. But the point is that once the engine is running, it’s the alternator that powers everything. In fact, the alternator will even recharge the battery. If you jump start your friend’s car, it’s recommended they drive around for a while. That’s so the alternator can recharge their battery.
The alternator in one of our cars was going bad. There are several possible indicators when an alternator is going bad. The “check battery” light might come on. The car might have a hard time starting. The car could randomly decide to burn out both $25 headlight bulbs! (Okay, maybe that was just me.) Anyway, if the power starts being flaky, the alternator is one of the things to check.
I knew the alternator was failing. In fact, we’d tested it. It was putting out inconsistent power. I bought a new alternator. And then I kept finding reasons to not do the work. The alternator isn’t hard to replace. It’s a couple of bolts, a pully and rethreading a belt. But, I just couldn’t seem to get to it.
Finally, after the headlights burnt out. . .twice, it was obvious that it couldn’t wait any longer. I do most of the work on my cars, but I do have a guy that I go to. And he has a guy he goes to that is a professional mechanic.
We took it to the professional. They used the alternator I’d purchased and it was $175 in labor charges. That’s not an unreasonable charge for a couple of hours labor. But, it still rankled me that I wasn’t doing it myself. When I came to pick up the car I realized why I didn’t do the work myself.
God was watching out for me.
Here’s a picture of the bolt that holds the alternator to the alternator bracket.
If it looks like that bolt has a groove in it, you’re right. And that other little piece? Well, they broke the bolt when they took it out. And if the professionals broke it, I would have broken it. You need to get all the parts out. That small part is the end of the bolt that the mechanic’s shop had to drill out. Basically they lined up a drill and drilled through about 1/2″ of broken bolt until they could back the rest of it out.
Not in a million years.
Had I attempted to replace this alternator, I would have broken the bolt, just as they did. And then I would have been stuck with a broken, undrivable car that I couldn’t fix. I don’t have the tools to drill out that kind of a bolt.
Oh, and that “groove” in the bolt, it’s from the alternator rubbing on the bolt. Probably why it got so stuck.
This took the mechanic 2 hours. I would have planned 3-4 hours if I did it myself. It would have taken me all day, half the night and then I still wouldn’t have been able to do it.
You might call it fate, or karma, or luck, or coincidence. But, for me, I’m giving the credit to God that He didn’t let me try to do that work myself.
Yep, God works in my garage. . .sometimes.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
This post is about the table top game “Star Trek Attack Wing.” Read a brief intro to it here.
We were doing it wrong. We understood that. We didn’t care.
My son and I have been enjoying the new Star Trek Attack wing upgrades and ships. He’s always favored the Borg and the Federation and I love the Ferengi. Even when they were a weak faction, they were my favorite. Now that they are one of the strongest races in the game, even without the rest of the Independent faction upgrades, they are a lot of fun.
We decided to play a 130 pure-Borg vs pure-Ferengi battle. All cards had to have either the Borg or the Ferengi symbol on them. Of course I could have used Lurin and turned any ship into a Ferengi ship.
Captain Lurin
That wasn’t the point. These are not fleets we would run in a tournament. Our FLGS runs penalty pure. So, especially the Ferengi would have had access to hundreds of other cards. Nope. For today we wanted to try just the Ferengi ships and upgrades.
We set up using the Obstacles Scenario. He ran three ships, all generics. Two Borg Octahedron and a Borg Scout Cube. He took advantage not only of the new cheaper cost of the Borg ships, but new captains, paired up with the Borg Queen as his admiral on the Scout Cube, along with Fleet Commander. Of course he used the Assimilation Tubules. But the only other upgrade he used was the new Technological Analysis, to deadly effect.
The Borg
I went with four ships: two old ones (Kreechta and Nunk’s Marauder) and two new ones (Lurin’s Bird-of-Prey and the generic b’rel.) I used a mix of new and old captains. Gint was my admiral. My ships were all equiped with the new new torpedoes. In fact, my son let me “cheat.” I own a single copy of the new Photon Torpedoes. However, he agreed that since we were doing more a proof-of-concept game, we would just assume every ship had the new torpedoes. My ships were a mix of Crew and Tech.
The Ferengi
I’m not sure that flying strategy had a big impact on the result of the game. He set up his ships in the middle of the North edge with the Borg Queen’s Scout Cube a little more toward the East edge. I placed my two b’rels in the middle of the South edge, with my two d’Koras off toward the East edge.
The Borg strategy was to come straight through the middle and engage as quickly as possible. My Ferengi strategy was to sweep around toward the East to attempt to pick off the weaker Cube before the octahedron’s could close to Range 2. I made it about half way.
My original plan was to close to Range 1 with the Lurin BoP and use Prak’s ability to force the Borg to sacrifice their action.
I couldn’t get close enough to make that work before I got hit. Although Lurin’s BoP has the Cloak ability, I chose not to use it. I would have had to discard my Metaphasic Shields when I inactivated my shields. Since we were playing the Obstacles Scenario, I figured I might need the ability to keep my action if overlapping an obstacle. It never really came into play.
I did take advantage of Gral’s text.
During the first couple of turns as I was making my sweep to the right, I discarded Gral during the End Phase to gain 2 GPLT. During the following Activation Phase, I paid 1 GPLT to bring Gral back. Turns out this was also a cheat. The GPLT rules state you can only bring an upgrade back from the dead one time. At least this cheat wasn’t on purpose.
I did cloak with the generic BoP. I had the Kemocite on board and it certainly makes the ship speedy.
I didn’t realize just how powerful this card was. More than once it saved me from bumping another ship because of close quarter flying. I placed Quark (who was hiding Thought Maker) and the Kemocite into the Cargo Bay. I will attempt to put Kemocite literally on every ship I can in the future. It’s not just the extra 2 movement. It’s the fact that you can decide at the time you turn your dial wither you want to use it. I also hid a couple crew under Daimon Solok. Being new to the cards, I screwed this step up too. I placed a 4SP Tactical Officer. Solok lets you hide crew with a cost of 3SP or less.
Picking the final two ships was a challenge. I went with Nunk’s Marauder for the free Scan action. I could then couple that with the Ferengi Probe to double the range bonus if I could close to Range 1.
Bractor was a natural choice as captain for any ship with the Ferengi Photon Torpedoes. The fact that they place an Aux token beside the target ship means that Bractor is going to be rolling a lot of bonus dice.
Being an “old style” captain, Bractor didn’t have any GPLT on his own. I added Rules of Acquisition Elite Talent to give him some GPLT to play with. It became clear that every ship needs GPLT.
Letek was my crew.
With a good supply of GPLT, Letek’s Aux token is easy to remove and he’s cheap to buy back. (One time only!)
The final ship was the Kreechta. I put Tarr on as the captain for his free Battle Station token. This was less important now that Ferengi can buy Battle Stations with GPLT. But, having it for free meant I could buy a Scan or an Evade. There was a lot of learning happening during and after this engagement. An astute reader pointed out that Borg do not have a Forward (now called a Primary) firing arc. Against the Borg, Tarr should not get any free Battle Stations.
Tarr is also an old school captain, but unlike Bractor, Tarr doesn’t have an elite talent. I added Admiral Gint with the Rules of Acquisition talent and Grand Nagus.
I didn’t end up using the Grand Nagus. But, for 2SP I figured it was worth having. In hindsight, I’d swap it out for Kemocite. However, Gint has another advantage. Gint gives every Friendly Captain the possibility of not having to spend GPLT. I forgot about him half the time and the other times I never managed to get the GPLT savings, but considering how useless the previous Ferengi Admiral Zek was, Gint is well worth bringing on every trip.
The Battle
The game was pretty evenly matched. The Borg managed to steal the Torpedoes from the generic b’rel which made a huge difference. More than stealing tech, the Technological Analysis Upgrade let the Borg blunt most of my attacks. Fortunately the Ferengi Torpedoes don’t require a Target Lock, but the Borg wiped out a lot of Battle Stations, Scans and Evades.
At a critical point in the battle, I had all four of my ships at Range 1 with both the Cube and an Octahedron. Both Borg ships were damaged. I had hopes of killing both of them.
Lurin’s ship abilty of getting to fire first and choosing who fires second was much more critical than I thought it would be. Lurin and one of the d’Koras fired. Next the Octahedron fired at the remaining d’Kora and gave it the worst possible Crit: Stunned Helmsman.
That ship lost out on 4 attack dice with quality. I managed to kill the Cube, but the Octahedron escaped. In quick succession they eliminated the Lurin and the Kreechta. Nunk’s Maurader was then caught in a cross fire and disappeared in a cloud of space dust.
For the final round, it was fitting that my final ship was the generic b’rel. Because the fight had a very Klingon “It’s a good day to die” feel. I was down to a single Hull hit left and there was no way for me to get out of range of the octahedrons. I didn’t even get a shot off, as one of the drone captains still had more drone tokens than my Captain skill of 4.
Lessons Learned
Even though I lost pretty soundly, I came away very pleased with the new Ferengi.
Gold-Pressed Latinum
Wow. This is a real game changer. I expect Ferengi captains will become very popular. Even with a non Ferengi captain, Admiral Gint teamed with a strong captain via Fleet Commander Resource is going to strike fear in the hearts of a lot of unsuspecting opponents. Consider Upgrades like Rules of Acquisition and Crew Gral and Nava, GPLT is going to play a major part in many fleets. All the GPLT Upgrades require a Ferengi captain.
It’s not like adding the Co-Pilot resource to your fleet. It’s like adding Co-Pilot to every ship in your fleet that is captained by a Ferengi.
Kemocite
I admit I didn’t appreciate this Upgrade before this game. It seemed like a gimmick, niche card. It’s not.
I own one copy and I’ll be buying the Ferengi Faction pack a second time to get another one. It should get serious consideration for inclusion on every ship. If you have to give up your only Tech slot, it’s probably worth it. I didn’t use a 5 come-about, but knowing you can extend your come-about to 5 for 2 SP is well worth it. Also, because the color of the maneuver stays the same, it lets you make 3 banks and 4 straights and still clear an Aux.
Lurin’s Bird of Prey
Lurin’s BoP definitely “punches above its weight.”
The ship ability of getting to attack first and choose who attacks second cannot be underestimated. Lurin’s lets you “save” the attack of a low captain that might otherwise never get to fire. Add in the fact it is native Ferengi and therefore Independent, and it costs 18SP, a 4SP discount from the old pricing. It’s as good as we thought it was going to be.
Generic b’rel Class
I only need three words.
Thirteen Squadron Points.
Ferengi Photon Torpedoes
Yes. They are that good.
I’m not sure how these could be any better. Two time tokens so they fire every other turn. No Target Lock needed. Primary and Secondary arc firing. Range 1-3. Same Attack value as the ships Primary Weapon Value. And, the killer is the target ship gets an Aux Token even if they block all the attack dice. For 2SP. These are going to be showing up on a lot of non-Independent/Ferengi ships. Even paying a 1SP penalty, they are worth it. And place them with Sakonna or Calvin Hudson and they might end up being free.
What it means to you
Even though the Ferengi didn’t take the day against the Borg, the point was to try out the new Ferengi upgrades. I loved the Ferengi when playing them was a labor of love. They have been transformed into the secret sauce that will turn strong fleets into elite killing machines. Thematically, it seems odd to picture Ferengi captains and admirals leading mixed fleets into battle. But, the idea that Ferengi and their Gold-Pressed Latinum will screw up traditional battle strategies fits perfectly with their reputation.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Last night I attended our local caucus meeting. I live Utah, in the city of Pleasant Grove, in the PG08 precinct. I attended last night’s caucus because I believe it’s important to participate in our democratic process.
And I figured it would make a good story.
I wasn’t wrong on either count.
Precincts are pretty small. My small town of Pleasant Grove has about 38,000 residents in 9.1 square miles. We have 14 precincts. That’s a couple thousand people and a little more than a half square mile in each district. People in my neighborhood know each other pretty well. Our kids play togetheer and attend school together. We attend church together. We have community events like Strawberry Days that tie us together. So, when you show up to a caucus meeting, you typically will know many of the people there.
Caucuses are simply a political meeting of registered voters of a particular party. I attended the Republican caucus for precint PG08. we met in the cafeteria of a local elementary school.
Rodney, I also enjoy that 100 feet of smooth road.
Excuse me?
The article you wrote about the new road section in front of you house. I enjoyed it.
Oh. . .yeah, okay. I’m glad you liked it. It would be great if all our roads were like that.
I forget. I sit down each evening and tap out 800 or 1000 words and post them, and I sometimes forget that you, dear readers, are not just numbers of visits to my site or views of a story, but often my friends and neighbors.
The caucus meetings were supposed to start at 7:00pm. Maybe I should have planned to arrive a little earlier, but I figured, I’m just going to slip in, get registered and sit quietly in the back taking notes. It didn’t quite work out that way. In fact, I almost walked out.
As I went to register I was asked,
Do you have a smart phone?
Why is that relevant?
We are doing the voting and registration via the VOATZ app. You’ll need to install the app before you can check in.
My training is in IT. I work with computer systems and lately I’ve become somewhat of an expert on rolling out new software to a large group of new users. This is not how you do it. I, along with everyone else in line started trying to download and install the VOATZ app.
And somewhere a server that had access to our voter registration information was getting hit with dozens of requests from our caucus and presumably thousands of requests from across Utah. This was probably a server that was not tuned to accepting thousands of requests in a very short amount of time.
This is not going to end well.
And it didn’t.
However, I’m glad I didn’t let the issues with the software turn me away. Democracy is a messy business at times. Forty minutes later, Jennifer Bautista, the Precinct Chair announced we were abandoning the online voting and instead we were going back to the paper ballots and pink wristbands.
Oh, and we were finally ready to have the opening prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
After that, the meeting went pretty smoothly. We were treated first to multiple speakers and even a video about why SB 54, otherwise known as the “Count My Vote” initiative, was a bad thing for Utah. The allegations got a little hyperbolic.
SP 54 is a law that says candidates can choose to try and be nominated through the caucus system, or they can collect signatures. A candidate needs to collect signatures from 2% of the registered voters for the office they want to try and win. So, if someone was running for a state house seat in a district that had 50,000 registered voters, that candidate would need to collect 1,000 signatures to get on the ballot.
The members of Precinct 08 were told that those who gather signatures are “buying our votes.” That they are paying for signatures. That we shouldn’t sign any petition for a candidate to get on the ballot. Oh, and there’s a petition going around for an initiative called “Keep My Vote” which would let citizens vote on whether to repeal SB 54. The 49 attendees at the caucus listened carefully and I think we all signed the petition.
I thought that the 20 minutes we spent being encouraged to sign the petition was really so much “preaching to the choir.” We were here at the caucus on a Tuesday night in March. Our support for the caucus system was pretty obvious. And the night was getting late.
At 8:10 we finally got to the business of the evening, electing precinct officers and county and state delegates. It started quickly, as the new chair and vice chair ran unopposed:
- Chair of PG08: Blaine Thatcher
- Vice Chair: Ken Clark
No one was interested in being the secretery/treasurer, so that office remained unfilled. Next up was county delegates. We needed to elect four. People yelled out nominations.
LORI WILLIAMS!
SECOND.
Do you accept?
Sure.
DAMON PARCELL!
SECOND!
Do you accept?
Yes.
VAUGHN MAYO!
SECOND!
Do you accept?
Absolutely.
BRADFORD PACK!
SECOND!
That’s awesome. We should be out of here in no. . .
RODNEY BLISS!
SECOND!
Do you accept?
Who said that?
This was not part of my plans for the evening, or the coming weeks where delegates interview the candidates for office. But, democracy is not a spectator sport. Service is the price we pay for liberty.
Do you accept?
Yes. Yes, I do
The nominations were now closed. Each of us got to give a short speech and then we voted. While the votes were being counted we started nominations for the three state delegates. Mercifully the nominations stopped at three.
Michael Wirrick
Julio Homer
Roy Spindler
All that was left was the results of the county delegate voting. It was odd. I didn’t want to win. And yet, I didn’t want to lose either. I didn’t want to spend the time needed. And yet, I wanted to be invovled. I think my internal conflict swayed the voters. I was not elected as a county delegate. I’m okay with that. Just as I would have been okay with serving. These are my neighbors and my friends. If they entrusted me with the responsibility to represent our caucus, I could not have let them down.
Democracy, or more accurately our Republic, is not a system of government that runs efficiently. It’s a messy endeavor. And yet, it works. It’s worked for over 225 years. It’s a wonderful thing to be part of this Grand Experiment.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved