Bounce Without Launch

Without question, the video game I've logged the most hours with, by far, is Sim City 4.  I've always been a fan of the series, from the original that I had on floppy disk all the way through 4.  The fourth edition of the game came out well over 10 years ago and I had consistently played it up until the spring of this year.  Its expansive maps and large on-line user community which provided custom content kept the game fresh over the years.  Plus the sequel(s?) received less than stellar reviews, making the question to upgrade to the newest edition an easy one to answer.

When my PC had a hardware failure and essentially died in October of 2014, I was forced to make a decision on which computer to buy to replace it.  At the time, it was difficult to find anything Windows-based within reason that wasn't Windows 8, which I wasn't interested in.  Because of this I decided to go with Mac, and generally I think that has been a good decision.  However, this essentially meant giving up on Sim City 4.  Sure, they had an original Mac port but I read it was terrible.  So suffice it to say that I was surprised to see Sim City 4 in the app store being released by a company called Aspyr.  This version was only $20 and got good reviews on the app store, so I decided to try it out.  I was not disappointed at first.

First off, the game looked great.  The graphics, while the same, had definitely underwent an overhaul.   Everything looked sharper and crisper.  The cities looked great, especially at night.  Secondly, the game ran great as well.  It was fast and never crashed, something I cannot say about its Windows counterparts that I ran on various different Windows machines.

I was thrilled to be able to continue my city building.  For 16 months I worked on a region that was loosely based on San Francisco's Bay Area.  I had pushed the population up to 2.9 million.  I even started using mods again, most of which were designed for the Windows version of the game, but some of which worked on Aspyr's Mac version.  Then last winter I got busy and didn't play the game for a few months.  When I went back to play the game again, something odd happened - the program wouldn't launch.  When I click on the icon, it bounces briefly on the dock and a window pops up that says "Verifying Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition," then disappears and nothing happens.  Nothing.

When I Google this problem I come up with absolutely no information which is strange.  Most of what comes up are issues people were having back in 2012 with the original Maxis Mac port.  Literally nothing comes up about this problem regarding the newer Aspyr version.  The app store reviews contain a lot of complaints regarding the issue but no real solution to the problem.  Seems like there was an update that occurred in the background which had an issue with any mods that were installed.  But even getting rid of the mods doesn't seem to fix the problem.  This is incredibly frustrating and makes me think, at this point with the game being over 10 years old, I may never be able to play it again.  And while the online modding community is part of what made the game great, I can't help but to think this problem, so severe that the game won't even start, would never happen on a console.

The Mini NES

Nintendo is releasing this mini version of the NES this fall.  Not only does the new release look like a scaled version of their classic 1980s console, it comes pre-loaded with 30 classic NES games!  I am super excited about this.  For a variety of reasons I rarely play games anymore.  Probably the biggest reason is that today's games are too complex to just sit down and play and enjoy.  Their learning curve is too steep and requires too much effort to really get into the game.  I think this is one of the things that make classic games so appealing to me.  For the most part, they can be picked up and played with minimal effort.  Of course, the biggest appeal is the nostalgia.  The price for this device is $60, which I think is right.  I'm almost for sure going to pick one up.  It comes with HDMI output, so I am hoping the games look at least decent on a modern TV.  Anyone who has tried playing any console prior to the PS2 knows that older consoles generally look pretty bad on modern TVs.  At any rate, what a cool idea.

Dog Days Of Summer

We've reached that time of summer when baseball's all-star game is being played.  The all-star break is an absolute black hole in the sports landscape, where the only major league playing takes a break.  We're somewhat lucky this year as the olympic trials have been going on, however.  I still enjoy the olympics, not so much for the major sports, but for the more fringe sports that I don't typically pay attention to, such as track & field and women's gymnastics.  Additionally, the weather has turned uncomfortably hot and my grass is now partially brown.  Hence, the two month writer's block.  I've either been too busy to write, or not busy enough to have anything to write about.  I'm going to try to get back on the wagon. Cheers!

Babysitting Adults

Seeing as how there is a massive prescription narcotics abuse problem in this country, in late 2013 the state of Indiana released guidelines for prescribing chronic narcotics.  Basically, anyone taking a certain amount of narcotic for greater than 3 months qualified for chronic pain management appointments.  These appointments included extra paperwork to determine levels of anxiety and depression, abuse potential, doctor shopping habits, and urine drug screens.  For various reasons I have been lax with these rules, until now.

By an overwhelming amount, the urine drug screen is by far the most interesting part of this process.  The paperwork is mostly a waste of time as people lie about their abuse potential and it's mostly busywork.  The urine drug screen is where the action is located.  The majority, I would estimate 80%, of the urine drug screens I perform have discrepancies.  Some people are taking others pain medicines.  Some aren't taking the medicines they're prescribed.  Others are taking street drugs, by far the most popular is marijuana.  I'm convinced half the population is smoking pot.  I'm to the point now where I expect people's drug screens to have inconsistencies.  And when they do, I stop prescribing them narcotics.  I absolutely should've been doing this from the beginning.

And yet I hate this aspect of my job.  I don't think I've ever been loose with prescribing these medicines.  But when people had pain complaints, and a reasonable response to the medicines, I would prescribe them.  This process has opened my eyes so much have essentially done an about face.  I've basically reached the point where I don't want to prescribe narcotics for any indication, especially as a primary care doctor.  This is because (A) I have long term follow-up with these people and can't get them off the medicines (until they fail their drug screen) and (B) I don't want to spend my whole day doing these lengthy, cumbersome appointments for pain.  I get asked several times per week to prescribe these medicines, usually for some benign condition or pain syndrome with an unknown diagnosis, and I just shake my head and politely offer them an anti-inflammatory.  They typically then ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again.

Oh It's On, Part II

Something strange is going on.  Shortly after encountering the mouse invasion (which I think has been taken care of), we started noticing ants in our house.  First a few per day, then a few every time we went into the kitchen, then 5-10 every time we went to the kitchen.  They were always congregated around the kitchen sink.  We never saw them anywhere else.

To some extent, having ants is worse than mice.  We had the small, black type, which blended in with our countertops and were somewhat difficult to spot.  Because of this, every time I picked up anything from the counter, especially if I was planning on eating it, I felt compelled to inspect it.  It's the kind of feeling I'd expect to have if I were living in filth.

I've never had an ant problem inside the house before, so once again I was new to eliminating this type of pest.  After consulting the internet (What would a home owner do without the internet, by the way?) and a couple of my friends, I decided to get ant baits instead of killers.  When I bought them I had no idea how they worked (turns out it's a bit morbid, but really an ingenious way to get the job done).  A few days after setting the traps, we noticed a marked increase in the number of ants we were seeing.  I was becoming a bit nervous to be honest.  But a few days later the number decreased and at this point we basically aren't seeing any ants.  Hopefully this is the last pest we have to deal with for awhile.

My Fitbit Measures My Inactivity

This year our company changed their health insurance policies.  No longer is the biometric screening process required.  Instead, they are incorporating other measures of health, such as activity level.  Generally speaking, I think this is a great idea.  I don't want to go on too big of a tangent here, but screening the masses for high cholesterol doesn't benefit anyone.  In order to track our activity levels, the company gave us all Fitbits for free.  I picked up mine and have been wearing it (minus the weekend where I lost it) for the past few weeks.  I knew I had low activity levels, but my results have been a bit alarming.

Apparently the national average is somewhere around 4,000 steps per day and the American Heart Association recommends at least 10,000 steps per day.  According to my Fitbit, I average right around 4,000 steps per day.  Thus far my high has been 8,600, so I haven't reached the recommended step count one time in two weeks.  The majority of my steps come while I'm at work, which isn't many.  Obviously to increase my count anywhere near the recommended 10,000 mark, I'm going to have to work on it outside of work.  To be honest, I don't see that happening routinely.  Maybe on the weekends, but not during the work week.  Thus far my Fitbit has only confirmed what I already knew -  that I live a sedentary lifestyle.  Looks like I'll be getting that biometric screen anyway.

Burn The Witch

News came out earlier this week that Radiohead "disappeared from the internet", leading to speculation that they would be releasing a new album soon.  They did release a song on YouTube the next day, and I like it a lot.  I'm not saying that just because I'm a huge Radiohead fan.  In fact, I typically have to listen to their new songs several times before I appreciate them.  I think I listened to King of Limbs around 10 times before I liked it.  But I liked this song from the beginning.  Can't wait for them to release more music from the album.