Monday morning I volunteered for a vision screening at the National Medical Association meeting. I thought we'd be seeing poor people like at most screenings, but we were actually screening MDs attending the meeting. Not what I was expecting, but oh well.
Some of the stations.
I ended up taking retinal photos of people. Hadn't done that in a few years, but it was pretty easy.
One attendee had an epiretinal membrane; otherwise they were pretty normal.
Our milk is bad again way before the expiration date. Our fridge must be having problems.
The washer says "suds." That probably isn't good, but what does it mean?
Ah, it means there are suds. That certainly makes sense. Now I have to wash it all again in another washer.
On the other hand, they're power washing the floor and making it look much nicer.
Some of the stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame are Pokestops.
The Hollywood Highlands complex has multiple Pokestops.
Ooh, a Dragonite appeared! That's probably the most powerful Pokemon in the game right now.
And I caught him.
Otherwise you have to farm a bunch of Dratinis to evolve to him and you can't do that nearly as reliably anymore as there aren't any Dratini nests after the last big update.
Great meal at Dave & Busters.
And then onto the games. Miriam, her son, and Ogii's nephew came with us.
Basketball.
Everyone loves Skeeball.
Shooting a ball through hoops.
Looks like we have a jackpot!
That's a lot of tickets.
Giant Connect 4.
Multiplayer Pac-Man.
Ogii and I on a running game.
Giant-key piano game.
Mario Kart.
3D Star Wars game.
Cashing in lots of tickets afterwards.
We went to Suicide Squad on opening night with Ogii's sister, her husband, and their son. There were a lot of people dressed as Harley Quinn, including some guys.
The fire up the 14 is almost totally contained. Thankfully it mostly burned up terrain, not houses.
The cylinder gears get messed up on the left eye on the phoropter at work, so I took it in to get repaired.
They game me an almost identical one to use while the other one was being fixed.
A thrift store with a Porshe dealership reflected in the front door.
A lot of hackers have taken over gyms with super-strong characters. I think this might be one; I don't know if anyone could possibly be level 37 yet playing the game correctly.
The La Brea Tar Pits is jumping on the Pokemon Craze by offering a discount.
The Tar Pits are a Charmander nest. I caught enough of them to evolved a Charmander to a Charmeleon...
... and then into a Charizard.
People are still finding little tricks in the game, like bonus items after the tenth Pokestop in a row.
There were a ton of people at LACMA for free jazz.
Packed onto the lawn.
Levitated Mass and palm trees.
From underneath.
Ogii getting a picture of her family.
Dancing area only for jazz.
The band.
Lots of people listening.
Looking up at the street lights.
Coming up the stairs at the statue garden.
Herakles the archer.
A Guillermo del Toro exhibit.
How is that car supposed to get out?
Pretty nice weather in Santa Monica.
A woman feeding ducks at the park.
Pokemon in the dust of a car instead of "clean me."
My metal credit card got stuck in this card reader. It's only happened a few times, but it took someone over 30 minutes to come and open it up.
All of the summer dance mixes have pictures of women in bikinis on them.
This park has paw prints of different animals in the sidewalk.
Small ones.
Hooves.
Close together.
Farther apart.
Hopping.
Gorgeous house.
Another big one on top of a hill.
And another.
A funky house on the ocean.
Drive through playground breakfast; they need commas between those.
A Ferrari you can rent in Hollywood.
LA Times pictures?
LA's Johnie's Coffee Shop got turned into a Bernie Sanders ad.
A huge line of people waiting for a sale to start.
I thought this was for the genetics testing site, but I'm not sure about the Ten at the beginning.
Nerds.
I really doubt my laptop will last 50% longer by switching browsers.
Different ways to get to Salinas from Los Angeles. Flying isn't that much faster than driving and they're both much faster than bus or train, which are both pretty much unworkable for a weekend trip as they eat up an entire day.
How much home you can afford.
PokeAdvisor lets you see the IV score of your Pokemons. There's no way in-game to figure these out.
One way to farm a lot of stardust: hit a group of gyms that are close together.
Pokemon hatched eggs have much better IVs that caught Pokemon on average.
One good way to level up a gym: put a Magikarp, which does very little damage, as the first defender and beat up on it, especially with Pokemon with less than 1/2 of the Magikarp's CP as you get double the prestige that way.
I used the Magikarp trick to level up this gym. Also, Chansey is easy to attack with because she has a ton of health for her level.
I couldn't dodge the Magikarp's charge attack, though, so instead of using a Pokemon with 1/2 of it's level, I just used some that were a bit below.
It's fun watching the fish get fried by lighting.
Got it to level 10 from level 1 on my own.
Really tall.
It does take a lot of potions, though.
You can also use Pokemon that you have evolved to level up your own gym or attack another gym before transferring them. That saves on potions, although it's not quite as efficient because you won't have the optimal levels.
And also how to hold gyms:
Make them huge and scattered them around.
Someone else confirming the same.
It'd be tough to hold any gyms for a week in LA; you usually can't hold them for more than a few hours.
I have a bunch of eggs about to hatch, including two 10k ones.
Oh no! They disappeared? Did the game eat them? Nope; it just shows that they're gone a few seconds before they actually hatch. Whew.
A Pokemon I hadn't caught yet.
That's an accurate name for the Pokestop.
How close you have to be to spawn Pokemon.
I wish I had known this earlier. You keep the IV levels when you evolve a Pokemon. So when you have one you want to evolve, you should check all of their IVs and only evolve the strongest one.
A current tier list.