Poke-Progress

Update on the Pokemon Go thing--today I've had much more luck getting the game to work. I was finally able to finish the tutorial and choose my "nickname".

Sadly, pretty much everything I could think of was taken. Which somehow led to me getting stuck with the nickname of "mmcboise", which sounds like some kind of DJ name but is actually an abbreviation of the name of the company I work for.

I then discovered that you can catch a decent number of Pokemon just hanging out in your room:

I also figured out how to take photos of the Pokemon, so here, have an awkward photo of a "Rhyhorn" sitting on my lap.

This one is called an "eevee". Whatever it is, it's my new favorite--look how cute!

Geeze my room is depressing with everything packed up. Adding the Pokemon is kind of an improvement.

I then took my new game skills out on the road for a test run, heading towards Ann Morrison Park. While there, I saw a few people who maybe could have been playing? Maybe? But the only other person who was playing for sure was a guy who passed me in the park and asked me if I'd been finding anything good. I pointed him towards a section of sidewalk where I'd found a "Graveler" and felt like I was one of the cool kids.

This early in the game, it's pretty easy. Mostly I'm catching lots of "Pidgeys", pigeon looking things which I use to make my new geeky hobby even geekier by giving them names like "Shuu", "Yuuya", "Sakuya", and "Okosan". (If you got those references, you might have a problem.) But I did meet my first real challenge with a cephalopod looking thing called a Tentacool:

Do you see those beady eyes? Those are the eyes of a jerk.

I used up about twelve Pokeballs trying to catch that thing, and crashed the app twice and my phone once. It even jumped back out of the Pokeball when I caught it-- something no one had told me was even possible! I had been planning on giving it an awesome name, like "Cthulhu", but after all that, I took revenge on the thing by naming it "Squidworth" instead. And I don't even like Spongebob Squarepants.

When I got back to my apartment, I'd walked 3.5 kilometers, had taken an hour longer than I'd anticipated, had completely worn out my phone's battery, and had caught fifteen Pokemon. Not a bad start.

My roommates think it's hilarious that I'm playing this game, but so far it's kind of fun.