Farmer e- and the nine course meal

This post was mostly written on May 3 after an evening of Ingress and socialization with the local Resistance but between my phone and the blog, it got garbled as a draft and lost.

Thankfully, I had a list of folks in-game names from Google Keep and it did its job and kept them for me so I can recreate this entry!

On April 29, I met up with a handful of Ingress agents to build a small Level 8 farm in the Children's Area at Golden Gate Park.  We met at the carousel and since we didn't have enough Level 8 agents, we built a Level 7 farm and distributed Hint water redemption passcodes across a network connection.

After the event ended, I took a nice continued walk with gundamxx123 who I have a lot in common with.  We both work in similar fields and "talk the same talk" and we both are really responding to the social aspects of Ingress.

As Level 8 agents, the game is no longer an attempt to grab action points.  It becomes more about mentoring lower level agents and building farms.  To build high level farms, you need a group of high level players.  Even a Level 8 agent is limited to deploying one level 8 resonator on a portal.  That means to build a level 8 portal, you need 8 Level 8 agents.

While walking with gundamxx123, we decided that for the next Ingress meetup, we wanted to do something a bit different.  We wanted to organize an event where we all sat down and had a nice dinner and the farming and hacking and battling was a secondary event that occurred in addition to a nice meal where we could sit and socialize.

It didn't surprise me that I got an event invitation the next day for a dinner event at New Sun Hong Kong Restaurant along the border of Chinatown and North Beach, which also has the important attributes of a) being an active Ingress portal, b) being surrounded in close proximity by several other portals and c) able to host a big party of people at nice round tables.

When we initially talked about the event, gundamxx123 and I expected a handful of folks to respond and maybe a few would even show up.  Even if it was just the two of us, we'd still have had a small dinner and farmed a bit.

We ended up with eleven people, two agents celebrating birthdays and a nine course meal!

Level 7 agents, Allissasaurus and Aleckazam, I had met before while building a farm at Colma Cemetaries.  They brought along a friend to help celebrate Aleckazam's birthday but he was sadly an iPhone user.  thecatspaws was also a Level 7 agent, reaching Level 8 a short time later and participating in a all-female Level 8 portal farming project on May 5.

The rest of the table was filled with seven Level 8 agents, one shy of being able to build a Level 8 farm.  In addition to gundamxx123, we were joined by cynja, dikexin, zakuma, SwerveMMF and AndreRiskManager, a semi-retired agent who was also celebrating his birthday.

By the time the entire party had arrived, at least Andre and I were pretty hungry.  Andre lead the ordering and we ended up with roast peking duck, hunan style shredded pork, Mongolian beef, Moo Goo Gai Pan, Black Mushroom with Green Vegetables, Chow Mein, baked clams in black bean sauce, sizzling rice soup, stir fried filet of rock cod, many pots of tea and water.

During our dinner, in addition to Ingress we talked about movies, with me sharing a registration link to a Star Trek screening for IT professionals, sports, other video games, smartphone deals, places to park in the city for cheap, two agents' upcoming wedding, Google I/O and several other topics.  It was like having dinner with old friends except I'd only met three people at the table before and really only had a full conversation with one.

It was a great meal.  We did a significant volume of item exchanges at the table and zakuma gave out 5GB Dropbox codes.  That came in handy.

After around four hours of eating and socializing, the party wrapped up.  I thought it was a great success.  We dubbed the event "Operation Peking Duck" and joked that the next one should be "Operation Pad Thai".  Eventually, we decided on Mission Bowling Club for our next dinner and a farm event and I would be planning that one.

That particular meetup is scheduled for May 21.

Once the party wrapped up, gundamxx123 drove us over to the Haight and we "said hello" to a small Level 8 portal farm that the Enlightened built while they too were having a bit of a meet up at Murio's bar.  I was a bit startled when they came out and said hello right back to us, face to face.  I met SFHandyman and was reacquainted with IPv6Berry, while others didn't introduce themselves but waved as well.

The very next day, I was hacking the high level Enlightened train car portal next to where I work when another agent noticed me and asked my agent name, I said eminus and he said, "Hi, I'm neo" and walked away.

A few minutes after departing I realized that neo was Niantic Labs' Product Manager, Brandon Badger.

The only other non-hacking Ingress activity I've had lately came on Monday, May 6, when I took BART from Millbrae and captured and linked up some portals on the BART platform.

My wife and I did have a Google+ Hangout with Resistance agent mistyayn on Tuesday, May 7 about a non-Ingress related project.  It is cool how Ingress is bringing us into a whole new community of people and places we may have never come into contact with otherwise.

Level 8!

Mission Briefing:

After five months of duty serving in the reserve forces of the Resistance, Agent eminus received an Intel package containing directions to his most important mission yet.  Highly classified Intel indicated a strong Enlightened presence near the area designated as "Smurf Village" near the Civic Center of San Francisco.  To reach Level 8 clearance, RA7 eminus would need to attack a specific portal held under Shaper influence and claim it for the humanist population.

The primary target for this operation was a Zipcar parking space portal on Mission Street between 7th and 8th.  Secondary targets nearby would assist Agent eminus in reaching his goal if primary goal failed.  If successful in destroying the Enlightened resonators and deploying to fully occupy the portal named "Zipcar - 1160 Mission Street" RA7 eminus' clearance would be upgraded to Level 8.

Chatter in the COMM channel, declassified here for the first time:

10:33AM
[secure] Otarin: Dear god, would you look at Smurf Village. Gross.
10:51AM
[secure] ChromePanda: dropped a couple bombs on it as I went by on the bus
10:57AM
[secure] Otarin: @ChromePanda Thanks, just saw that. Slightly less slimy now :)
10:57AM
[secure] ChromePanda: just on 8th street, wish I could have done more, hopefully someone will get a bunch of AP out of re-capturing it
10:59AM
[secure] Otarin: @ChromePanda Hoping the same. I'd hate to see it like this when I get home; I'll clean it up, but it'd be better if it goes to someone who needs the AP.
11:07AM
[secure] eminus: i think after the conference call that i am on i may need to be L8 for my next meeting and dispose of at least one green portal at smurf village

Shortly before 1200hrs, RA7 eminus reached the target portal, beginning his attack:

11:51AM

eminus destroyed an L3 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:51AM

eminus destroyed an L3 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:51AM

eminus destroyed an L4 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:51AM

eminus destroyed an L4 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

Problems with the scanner app delayed the attack further at this point.  A forced reboot acted almost like a normal portal hacking cooldown period.  Tears began to form in RA7 eminus' eyes.  The moment was almost at hand.

11:56AM

eminus destroyed an L5 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link that's California (1099 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed a Control Field @Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA) -13 MUs

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link Friend Ears (1137 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link A Place to Dream Mural (98 Julia Street, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed an L4 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed a Control Field @Colorful Lamp Post (1 Rausch Street, San Francisco, CA) -166 MUs

11:57AM

eminus destroyed a Control Field @Colorful Lamp Post (1 Rausch Street, San Francisco, CA) -72 MUs

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link Colorful Lamp Post (1 Rausch Street, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed a Control Field @Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA) -147 MUs

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link Colored Lamp Post (1074-1098 San Francisco Bicycle Route 30, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed a Control Field @Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA) -451 MUs

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link that's California (1099 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed the Link Take Flight (1185-1199 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA) to Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:57AM

eminus destroyed an L4 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:58AM

eminus destroyed an L5 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:58AM

eminus deployed an L1 Resonator on Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

11:58AM

eminus captured Zipcar-1160 Mission Street (1160 Mission St San Francisco, CA)

GPS drift in the scanner app forced RA7 eminus to give up on fully deploying on primary target, resulting in deployment of low level resonators on secondary target "Lenahan Mural".

12:05PM

eminus deployed an L1 Resonator on Lenehan Mural (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)

12:05PM

eminus deployed an L1 Resonator on Lenehan Mural (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)

12:05PM

eminus deployed an L1 Resonator on Lenehan Mural (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)

12:06PM

eminus deployed an L2 Resonator on Lenehan Mural (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)

12:06PM

eminus deployed an L3 Resonator on Lenehan Mural (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)

12:06PM

eminus deployed an L3 Resonator on Lenehan Mural (1148 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)

12:07PM

Level Up!  You are now Level 8.

And with that, eminus' security clearance was upgraded and he was officially RA8, the highest ranking Agent Level currently available.

Celebratory Chatter in the COMM channel, declassified here for the first time:

12:13PM

[secure] eminus: what a productive meeting I had at the Lenahan mural and zipcar portal. Ding!

12:19PM

[secure] Peregrinator: @eminus yay! you should write off your expenses for making LEVEL 8!!

12:48PM

[secure] Blackfoot: @eminus congrats!

1:13PM

[secure] Otarin: Thanks for helping on the Village @cynja!

1:29PM

[secure] gundamxx123: @eminus congrats l8

1:29PM

[secure] gundamxx123: @eminus congrats l8

1:30PM

[secure] cynja: @Otarin Wish I could have done more. Crazy winds & server lag sent me running for cover.

2:04PM

[secure] eminus: That server lag was crazy!

2:13PM

[secure] cynja: @eminus But the lag didn't stop you from reaching L8! Congrats!

Agent Post-Op Report:

Planning a strategic attack for minimal walking and maximum AP using an extremely limited amount of bursters and resonators worked out well for me in my final push to reach Level 8 in Ingress.  Yesterday, I scouted the Jamba Juice portal in Westlake Shopping Center in the afternoon and earned over 8000AP by just destroying the fields and links emanating from that portal and then deploying resonators to fill it.  Today, I worked my way through the remaining AP needed to reach Level 8, again by destroying fields and links and capturing a single portal.  I used public transportation for both events to minimize the walking on the still recovering knee and got to the highest available level currently in the game.

I had committed to Brian Rose of Niantic Labs that I would let him know when I hit Level 8 when I met him at the USC event a few weeks back.  I'm there now!

Thanks to my wife for bearing with me while I play this crazy game and the many folks playing for their support in helping me reach Level 8 over the five months that I've participated in Ingress thus far.  I've walked over 300 miles as tracked by my FitBit and Pebble devices and have had many grand adventures.

I recovered the Verum Inveniri storyboard drop back in February that lead to my likeness being added to the Niantic Project as well here: http://goo.gl/DqKEc

Niantic Labs have helped take me to places I'd have never gone before and the story is just beginning to be told.

To those of you in Southern California tonight for the Misty Hannah performance, BE SAFE!  I can't wait to see where this rabbit hole continues to go.

Agent Report to Local Resistance "Resist SF":

Couldn't stay long but breaking a bunch of fields from the Zipcar portal and dropping some resonators on the Lenahan mural made for a very productive meeting near Smurf Village for me. 

Thank you to each and every one of the Resist SF agents that supported me with transport, Intel, gear drops, social interaction and just plain old encouragement to keep going!

Additional addendum to Resist SF faction:

I just wish I'd had some actual time to spend over there.  It was basically race up Mission Street, attack the portal.  App crashed, phone crashed, reboot everything, attack the portal.  Acquire AP, deploy, GPS drift, give up trying to find the Zipcar portal and deploy on the mural then take BART back to FiDi to get back before my next actual meeting.

RA8 eminus has indicated he will now attempt to maintain a low profile, having taken a telephone maintenance grate to the knee and will assist in building and maintaining high level farms rather than attacking Enlightened targets.

The Home Stretch

Yesterday afternoon, I left work 30 minutes early to play Ingress.  I cut my lunch in half to balance things out so I wasn't actually skipping out on any responsibility.

There was to be a meetup, Level 7 pop up farm build and item exchange at Yerba Buena Gardens, just a few blocks from where I work.

I got there around 4:30 and met up with RA8 Balshor.  We waited a few minutes and RA8s rukh and Whiz arrived.  We waited just a few minutes longer and started at the Martin Luther King Memorial fountain and worked our way around the garden.  I was about to claim a portal when SAO, a newer RA claimed and deployed on it.  We tried to locate him but he was elusive.  Oh well.  I still needed a good 155000AP to reach Level 8.  I wasn't getting that far deploying on one portal.  

As we were passing by the MOMA, RA8 gundamxx123 arrived.  He was distraught over the news that fellow agent Andre was "retiring" from the game.  When he found out I was Level 7, he got excited.  After we farmed the Yerba Buena portals, gundamxx123 asked how many points I needed to hit Level 8 and he and Whiz offered to help get me there last night.

We started by farming enemy portals in Golden Gate Park, getting a bunch of low level items that I would then be deploying at the Legion of Honor.  At the Legion of Honor, gundamxx123 and Whiz dropped a bunch of supplies to me and I destroyed and delinked the entire cluster of Enlightened portals, then deployed resonators to fill all of the portals and then linked all of the portals as much as possible.

After spinning a web of links, we headed to the Haight, where I "said hello" to Engine Company 30, the actual home portal of Commie|Banker, DblTapered, SisterWife and ieatlint, four high level Enlightened agents.  I destroyed a bunch of links in the Haight and then we drove back toward Daly City, where gundamxx123 dropped me and Whiz off at the BART station and my night ended.

I played for around five hours, using a borrowed Anker external battery pack for a portion of that time that gundamxx123 lended to me to get me as close to Level 8 as possible.   I accumulated 130000AP throughout the night, the highest total I ever achieved in a given day playing Ingress and I did so mostly in the passenger seat of a car, which left my still healing knee to rest comfortably for the majority of the adventure.

I still needed around 25000AP to reach Level 8 and gave myself the following mission after scouting the Ingress Intel map at work this afternoon.

Operation Surgical Strike:

At 1820hrs, RA7 codename eminus arrived at target location Alpha, a known "Juice Club" gathering place with a large amount of XM energy emanating from a single portal.

Upon Intel investigation and report, Agent eminus discovered a significant presence of portal links and small mind unit fields attached to the Enlightened controlled portal.

The operation involved the deployment of XMP bursters in controlled detonation sequence to destroy the Enlightened resonators, severing the links, destroying the fields and liberating the Shaper controlled mind units within.

As a reward for his success in completing this mission, Agent eminus was awarded 8259AP.

After dinner, my wife drove me to a couple of other locations in the area and I created a field that earned me some more AP.  My overall exploits for the evening are pretty much all captured in the below screenprint.

The one bad thing was when I got greedy and tried to take down the Daly City Post Office on Sullivan.  dalycitysteven was there to deploy as I destroyed so I was unable to take down the links, leaving me just 99% of the way to Level 8, with a little over 7000AP to go to reach my goal.

I've reached the home stretch.  There's no stopping me now.  I just need to find some low level portals in the city tomorrow, farm, destroy and deploy and suddenly I will have reached the upper echelon of Ingress players.

Caesar's Palace and Las Vegas Ingress

Yesterday was our last real day of vacation in Las Vegas.

We visited Caesar's Palace on the strip.  One of the reasons I was there was to play some Ingress. I got around 20000AP throughout our day and would have earned more had there not been a giant blue triangle covering the city.

Several of the portals were indoors so I hacked those while we headed for our next destination, Serendipity3, a restaurant famous for their Frrrozen Hot Chocolate. I got more portals outside while we waited for my wife to get a text message that our table was ready.

After a tasty dessert, we headed south to have dinner in Henderson and stopped off at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign and took a quick photo. I hacked the portal three times and didn't yet get a portal key. I figured I would try again on the way back.

On the way back, I got the Welcome to Las Vegas sign portal key. I have found portal keys to be very cool souvenirs from places we travel. My favorites from this trip were Randy's Donuts in Los Angeles, The Historic Fox Theater in Pomona, Real Alien Jerky in Baker and the MGM Grand Lion from Las Vegas. I have USC and UNLV keys from campuses we visited and Pea Soup Andersen's windmill from last week, a bunch of Hollywood and Universal keys from previous trips and the London Eye from a trade.

This morning we headed home.  I hacked and captured a couple of portals in the baggage claim area after we got back to SFO.  

Breaking an Ingress Treaty at UNLV

I started with 953044AP when we left for the UNLV Paradise Campus. I had noticed that it was all green, low level and heavily linked. I saw rumblings in the Comm channel that some guys were thinking of tearing it down and I decided to beat them to it.

My wife was my war driver. By car, I quickly gained 20000AP taking out the links on one side of campus. 

We circled to the other side of campus and I couldn't reach the majority of the links while parked. I decided to hobble a bit and kill the links on foot.

While walking across campus a couple yelled "Happy Ingressing" and I yelled back "Thanks" and kept going. I was on a mission. I got 30000AP more and over 1000000 total points cumulative from taking out the rest of the links.

On the way back the guy from the couple stopped me.

"So is the treaty done, is this it?"

To which I responded "What treaty?"

"This is supposed to be a low level farm area and I noticed you deployed some Level 4 and 5 resonators. That violates the treaty."

"Oh. I'm sorry, I'm from San Francisco."

"I thought you must be from out of town. Welcome to Las Vegas. I'm Chris (in game name morannon). My wife and I are maintaining the farm and a couple of the students keep throwing high level stuff on it."

His wife came over, her name was Yvette (in game name Harmy). They explained that both sides used the farm for leveling and for low level gear. 

They didn't mind me knocking it down and were happy because it would get them to Level 6 tonight. They just didn't want my incident to bring out local drama.

I apologized and explained that I only deployed one resonator so they cold quickly take each portal back but I really need the AP to get to Level 8.

They smiled and suggested I farm the Strip and come back tomorrow and knock it down again.

It felt like when I met Moschops at Jack London Square again, so welcoming. But these were supposed to be my nemesis in the game.

I checked the farm, most of my stuff was taken down and I hope they hit Level 6.

My wife took me up and down the majority of the strip and I hacked which portals I could before we stopped off at the Luxor and I captured the Sphinx/Luxor portal.

We got an awesome photo with it and I ended my Ingress day with 1008000AP.

Through the high desert to Paradise

Along the drive to Las Vegas was Baker, California, home of the world's largest thermometer. There was also a place called Mad Greek that sold gyros and falafels 24 hours a day.

Mad Greek had two Level 8 Enlightened portals. I felt it was my duty to take them down. They were also linked to the thermometer and somewhere else in the distance. It turns out that somewhere else was the Huntington Beach post office. Significantly far away.

When I took over the Level 8 Thermometer portal, I broke a link to the Los Angeles Arboretum. The LA Resistance were very grateful for the service I provided them today.

I was just about to take over the Alien Jerky portal when a local Enlightened agent (NeoDaNeenjah) said hello on Comm. I decided to leave him the one unlinked Level 8 portal and left. I was pleasantly surprised by the thanks I got for destroying the links by chance helping out some of the folks that I met at USC last week.

We got to Vegas and checked in to our hotel for the night. We took a brief nap and had dinner.

We stopped off so that I could capture the freshly linked green portal at the Pinball Hall of Fame. I was happy to see that they had an operable Attack From Mars, my favorite machine. I plucked in 75 cents and saved France and Germany from Martian invasion racking up a 1.5 billion point score, then taking the Ingress portal.

I destroyed the Enlightened resonators on the MGM Grand Lion and got some supplies while hacking along the ride up the strip to our hotel. Sadly most of the portals were on the opposite side of the strip or we were moving too fast to really take advantage but we have two more days here if we get adventurous.

I used to be a kickass Ingress agent until I took a telephone maintenance grate to the knee...

On Monday morning, after a full weekend in Los Angeles with an injured knee, I tried to go to the doctor's office.

My wife took me to his office to find that there were no morning appointments available until Tuesday. I opted to take the Tuesday morning appointment and head into work via Muni train.

I got to work okay with no real issue except for morons on the train that kept bumping into my leg even though I had chosen a corner seat seemingly away from everyone.

The work day was pretty difficult. Even having my leg propped up on a short cabinet didn't really help. By the time I took BART and the bus home, I was in a great deal of pain.

I wasn't looking forward to Tuesday's appointment with the doctor at all.

I slept a lot on Monday and we got to the doctor's office and he poked and prodded my knee a bit and said that he was surprised but my kneecap appeared to be intact. The damage was just a lot of blood clots above and below the left side of my knee. He sent me for an X Ray just to be safe.

I was glad to hear that there was likely no permanent damage and it would just take another week or two to heal.

I got my X Rays done at California Pacific Medical Center. The registration lady was extra nice when I told her who my employer was. I got a series of X Rays and was home before noon. My wife headed to work and I spent pretty much the whole day writhing in pain as my knee slowly heals.

The good news is that the X Rays confirmed that there is no fracture and I am slowly on the road to recovery.

On Wednesday morning, we departed once more for Los Angeles for a concert in Pomona and then a drive to Las Vegas on Thursday.  I captured some Ingress portals in the terminal at SFO and took advantage of preboarding due to the knee injury. 

We got from LAX to Pomona pretty quickly, only stopping so that I could capture the Randy's Donuts portal, using the carpool lanes the whole way.  I captured the Historic Fox Theater portal while in Pomona.

After the concert, I tried to play Ingress and farm the Level 7 portals in the area from the passenger seat but there were cops everywhere so we gave up and came home, lest be questioned by them for playing a game.