Virtual Wallet

And perhaps the horse will learn to sing. - The Mote in God's Eye

I have this dream where I live in the future and the only thing I have to carry on me is my pocket computer which takes the place of my phone, wallet, and keys. It's going to be the future soon. Carrying almost nothing is everyone's dream, right? Other people have this dream where they discard all of this other stuff and just carry this one thing around with them. To do it these days that thing would probably be the size of, oh, say a phone. Each passing year it should be getting smaller.
I dumped most of the cards out of my wallet a while ago by scanning them all (960x640 @ 290 dpi) and putting them into a photo album that syncs to my phone. I mostly haven't missed them, mostly. Sometimes doctor's offices get annoyed with making a photocopy of my insurance card off my phone (or I get annoyed with them taking my phone). Sometimes the barcode scanner has no problem reading off my phone and other times it works just fine. When it fails, people just need to type in the code. So that's basically worked.

Even ditching my rewards cards, health cards, ID cards, and other cards, there were still a few things I felt like I couldn't do without: (1) credit card, (2) driver's license, (3) emergency $20. I think that's all I need to make it through the majority of my days.
I really wanted to carry my ATM card - I mean really, but Mrs.Chaos has currently talked me out of it. "What do you need your ATM card for?" "To get money from the bank." "No you don't. You just walk in with your photo ID and they give you money. Also, what do you need money for?" Fair enough for now. I really wish I had a bank that would let me deposit a check by snapping a photo of it. Not yet.
So I'm going to try an experiment where I just carry my phone, my ID and a credit card. No more. To inspire me I bought a new iPhone case that can only hold those items. We shall see how it goes.
 

Recovery Commute

They finished the railroads when they finished out in the West Coast - Anthony Quinn

I started my new job on July 16th, which means today marks two months there.  My first month at work, Mrs.Chaos was away, and so I spent it being 100% at the office and staying with a coworker up in the Berkeley hills or at my old temporary lodging in Palo Alto.  The commute was crazy, but I did get my exercise in.  I had to do "recovery commutes" to let my feet and shins heal up.

In my former job I went every two weeks and it involves a three hour drive down on Monday morning, a half-hour commute to my bay area lodging each day, and then a three hour drive back home on Wednesday night.  Not the greatest commute.  I told myself that every two weeks I would end up spending eight hours driving which meant I had about an eighteen minute commute each way to work - just spread out.

Now in my new job my commute involves much less driving.  Today is only my second time trying out the new office commute but it should be fairly nice.  A twenty minute commute from my home to the train station, a hour and twenty minute commute on Amtrak with power, WiFi, food, bathrooms.  Follow that up by a thirty-five minute commute on BART which is less pleasant, but since I get on the first station I get to sit and compute.  Then there is that final 1.2 mile walk on the other end.  I could swap to Muni to finish it up, but the walk does me some good.

This new commute?  It still ends up taking about three hours, but there is something magical about being able to do all that on the train.  I can read.  I can work.  I can sleep.  Magical.

Epic Fantasy War

Armies marched, fought, claimed victory or conceded defeat, all for the wellsprings... - Thormun's Journal

It was a long time ago that I bought Heroscape. 2004? 2006? I think somewhere in there. In the years that I've owned it, I really only ended up playing it once or twice a year. Part of it is that you need a certain crowd to want to play a complex epic fantasy battle and the other problem is the setup. That certain crown that wants to play gets obsessed over the fact that there are 20+ different characters all with their own stats and special abilities.
The way it ended up was we would spend an hour putting the board together followed by another hour of people just looking through the various army cards. Maybe we'd get to the point of spending another thirty-minutes selecting armies and putting them on the board. Then everyone was done for the day. No need to play. So unless I could get people to set aside a good six or more hours to play it wouldn't happen. And honestly, who is going to set aside that much time? Even I have trouble doing it and I love to play the game.
Recently it was proposed that instead of painstakingly studying every hero and squad card for hours before the game, why not just pick armies randomly? Randomly? YES! So at first we started by doing our best to randomly draw cards from the deck trying to get everyone up to but not over a number (like 400 points). Then I realized, you know what would be way more efficient doing this than us? A computer.
The joke was that to ramp up with my new job, I needed to build a PHP app using the Zend framework against the NoSQL database. In the end, I just wrote a web app. Works great on the iPhone. So now when we sit down to play we are just five seconds away from having randomly fairly balanced armies. The future is awesome. It's a little sad that only two years after they stopped making it did I find the secret to playing it. Live and learn. Also - come over and play a game with me, will ya?

You Have to PAX

I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth. - Jerry Holkins (Gabe)

After five long years of being out of the country for Labor Day weekend, I finally made it to PAX. My friends have been going for, basically five years. Whereas I have been busy going to Turkey, England, India, Korea, etc. But this year? This year I went to PAX !
Since my friends have been going year-after-year they have built up a set of traditions. Things which must be done. During Gabe and Tycho's Q&A session after the keynote and kid (12?) went up to the mic and started with, "This is my first PAX..." and Tycho immediately responded, "if it's your first PAX, then you have to PAX!" In case you did not immediately recognize that, it's from Fight Club. Rule #8 - If this is your first fight club, you have to fight. So this became the theme of the weekend. When a tradition was mentioned that I or Mrs.Chaos (did I mention she was there?) didn't want to engage in, the response was always the same: "You have to PAX!"
Going to Acquisitions Incorporated? You have to PAX! Going to see music night with JoCo? You have to PAX! Playing board games (Zombicide) until 4am in the morning? You have to PAX! Playing card games at Tap House during dinner? You have to PAX! So it went. To be fair, these are time honors traditions created in the before time; in the long ago (1-5 years).
So what did I love? The most awesome thing? NASA/JPL did a panel about the Curiosity rover. To start with, I have this speechless amazement that humanity has put a ROBOT ON MARS! I amazed how mundane this is. I wasn't alive for the moon landing, but I image the entire world was speechless for the moments when they took a giant leap for mankind. Today? Today people think, "well, we put another robot on Mars." Are you kidding me? WE PUT A ROBOT ON MARS!!!! In fact, we had a robot in orbit around Mars take pictures of the new robot landing on Mars! The fact that people consider this... common place? No big deal? This blows my mind almost as much as the fact that humans are currently controlling a ROBOT ON MARS!
Beyond that? The Q&A sessions with Gabe and Tycho are pretty impressive. The questions range from excellent ("What are you working on in your free time?") to interesting to horribly awkward ("let me explain in explicit detail the way my girlfriend dumped me... and by the way, PAX is cool."). They handle the riff with grace and hilarity. I approve.
The concerts were fun as well. Mrs.Chaos enjoyed Video Game Orchestra (cause who wouldn't?) and Paul and Storm. I was sad that she didn't get much from Jonathan Coulten, who is clearly the most successful of the bunch. Yet, JoCo's performance was tough to get. If you weren't part of the JoCo cult, it wasn't very good. On the otherhand, most people at PAX are part of the JoCo cult.

Cards against Humanity (a mature audience-only version of Apples to Apples) was a big hit. They gave out T-Shirts for questions and answers and if you were wearing one, random people would ask to take photos of the two of your together. It happened to all of us.

We ended up commuting with Gabe (Jerry) twice and Darkhawk did his best to invite him to play games with us at Blarney Stone. It never worked out
Did I mention there is a pinball arcade in the backroom of a bar? The pinball is awesome. That is all.