Portal ALL the Things! (No not really)

Some of this might sound like I'm being a bit harsh, because I am. I really love this community and I hate to see people in this community upset because other people are careless.  Ingress is our playground to play in and it's up to us to make sure that the portals are high quality and interesting.  +NIA Ops shouldn't have to police this, it should be something we police ourselves.  And have some respect for the agents who put a lot of time and effort into cultivating great portals only to have someone who's being a bit selfish come along and ruin it.

If you haven't read the Ingress Candidate Portal criteria and you submit portals then I recommend you take a look.  But here some things that you shouldn't be submitting.

• Don't submit fake couch portals.  I know we all want one but really unless you live in a historic neighborhood or you live near fountain or sculpture then anything you come up with is probably not a very good idea.  Unless of course it's something like the pictures below.  If you're willing to paint your house in polka dots or get permission to cover a tree accessible to the public in clocks in order to have a couch portal then go for it!

• Don't submit building from multiple angels.   I've seen several instances of multiple portals for the same church pointed at different sides of the building.  That's just lazy. I know you want more portals but the more junk that clutters up the works the longer it takes for valid portals.   

Butthurt is not a reason to mark a portal for removal

This seems fairly straightforward but I also hear numerous complaints about it.  Just because the other side owns a portal constantly or has a portal in a somewhat restricted location does not necessarily mean it should be removed.  If it is a junk portal then by all means submit it for removal but if there is a chance a brand new player would accidentally submit it then I wouldn't do it.

• DO ask yourself before adding or rejecting a portal "If I were a brand new agent would I submit this as a portal?"

You really should at least take a look at  Ingress Candidate Portal criteria.  If you're not sure if a portal is valid then check out the Unofficial Ingress Portal Submissions community.  If you're still not sure you can take a picture of the potential portal then post it to the UIPS community and then submit the portal later. Just don't forget to include the potential name of the portal so you don't forget it later on (I'm always doing that).

If you have questions about the portal submission process you can ask in UIPS and one of the agents who's submitted 100s some probably thousands of portals can help you out.  

Remember Wheaton's Law

HappyStick

The first Saturday after I got my Ingress invite I hosted my first meetup.  The event itself I consider a miracle.  For years I had been dealing with depression and Anxiety and this was the first time in years that I was taking a risk and putting myself out there.  What made me so brave?  Throughout the year I thought it must be the XM that was changing me.  But in hindsight I now realize that it was the community that accepted me exactly as I was that changed me.

I have a lot of memories from that first meetup.  In fact I seem to recall every detail of that whole day, but there is one piece that stands out more then all the others.  +Bryan Kroger and I arrived at the Designated Starbucks and I pulled out my sign that read "We are the Resistance" and waited nervously for someone to show up.  After about 5 minutes someone tentatively looked at my sign and then looked me in the eye, I asked if they were Resistance they nodded and quickly found a place to sit and we chatted a little.

A few more people came and went but no one interested in my sign.  Then the door opened and in walked what I can still only describe as a human stick figure with attitude.  He was 6'9" but slouched a little to hide his height, very thin and a presence that clearly communicated his confidence.  He came right up to me and introduce himself as HappyStick.  I shook his hand and I remember thinking well this is going to be interesting.

That encounter stands out so vividly because without that encounter nothing that transpired after that day would have been possible.  The Seattle Resistance probably would not have been such a dominant force in the early days of Ingress, I would not have found my voice as a community leader, I would not have found confidence to share the Seattle Resistance stories and gain visibility on G+.  I called him my partner in crime.

I got a lot of credit in the early days for things that would not have happened without HappyStick.

We were total opposites.  While he was fast passed with a go go attitude, I'm generally reserved and want to collect information before making a move.  But we were both opinionated and knew we were right.  Between 1 AM AP runs, marathon 20 hour road trips and lots of socializing I often felt myself being swept along the HappyStick train.  But truth be told I absolutely loved it.   Having someone that I trusted show up to or invite me to every event gave me a confidence I had never know.  

HappyStick is a constant Beta tester.  I'm sure we've all known guys like this.  They dive into something new and exciting with gusto, devoting all their time and energy to it.  Eventually they solve all the puzzles or the game looses it's appeal and they are off to something new.  Although his time as an agent was short HappyStick was a force of nature who's presence is still evident throughout the Ingress Universe.

HappyStick was a great friend, one I will never forget.  I hope I get a chance to run into him some day and tell him thank you for helping me find my voice.

My first "fire fight"

The day after I got my invite I spent the whole day at work scouring for information on Ingress.  I found the spreadsheet of passcodes +Bryan Kroger was using and quickly typed them all in to my scanner, when I was done I had what I thought was a nice little cache of gear.  I was so naive.

Unfortunately I had plans on Monday night so we didn't get to capture the post office near the house but it was constantly on my mind.  

Tuesday night I came home after work after I fed the dogs checked G+.  OMG! I had a PM from +Brian Rose!   He wanted to give me an invite about a post I had shared a few days earlier about an Ingress Group Meetup in Chicago.  I told him I had an invite already but I was really interested in doing a meetup and what was the best way to go about it?  He suggested I use a G+ event, so I created an event and sent it to everyone on G+.  I thanked Brian for the help and he responded by saying he would give me 10 invites for the event! I was stunned, invites coveted and I had 10 of them to give away.  I remember feeling a sense of pride and honor, I wanted everyone to be part of this adventure.

By the time Bryan got home I was buzzing with excitement.  Between the conversation with Brian Rose and wanting to go claim the post office I was talking a mile a minute.   We rushed through dinner and then headed out the door to claim the post office.  

Ya know, in hindsight I'm realizing that those first few days we were very conservative in our playing.  In the weeks to come we'd get drive through and stay out late to play.

On the way to the post office I was telling Bryan that I wanted to take down this portal by myself because he was already level 2 and I was still 1000 or so away from 2.  When I told him I was getting out of the car to blow up the resonators he asked why.  This shocked me, it isn't very often that I know something Bryan doesn't and I expected Ingress to be no different.   I explained that the damage was centered around where you were standing so if you wanted to do the most damage to a resonator you had to stand right on top of it.

So here I was at the closed Kent Post Office in the dark with my warm coat and scanner in hand I ventured away from the car in my first solo mission.   I walked in what I thought was the general direction of one of the resonators turned out I was going the opposite direction, this was the first hint that I am very directionally challenged at times.  Once I reached the resonator I fired off my first XMP and did 1% damage, YES! I was on a roll! Seriously though firing that first XMP felt totally awesome.

I continued to fire off XMP, slowly making progress.  As I chewed through bursters and moved around the Portal I learned the lesson that sometimes you can't reach resonators, 2 of the resonators were behind the post office fence.  120 L1 XMP later I destroy the last resonator! Then the portal was grey. 

I felt like a badass

Okay well as badass as any early cheering 30s engineer geek girl can feel.  

My adrenaline really was pumping as hoped in the car Bryan said "Congrats Honey!!....Are you gonna capture the portal?".  Sheepishly I looked down down at my scanner and realized I forgot that part and quickly started deploying as Bryan started the car to drive home.  

As I deployed those resonators I felt pride that m name was on it, and then I realized I had leveled!  I squealed with excitement.  As my adrenaline came down I realized I had made a mistake.  I hadn't deployed at max distance the way the guides said to.  That was the start of my love hate relationship with resonator placement.

I had seen posts about peoples Ingress adventures and I realized as we drove home this really was going to be an adventure.  As an software engineer I didn't really have a lot of opportunity to think creatively outside of code.  But that first adventure had my mind spinning and I was already thinking of writing my adventure.  The next day when I got to work I wrote my very first first Situation Report (be warned it's terrible).

My Ingress Anniversary

I remember November 25th, 2012 was a cold but sunny, which is rare in Seattle.  The night before my dad and his girlfriend got on a plane to go home after Thanksgiving and I was ready to get going with Ingress.

I still didn't have an invite so when I woke up I quickly checked my G+ stream and my email for the 900th time that week hoping for an invite but no such luck.  +Bryan Kroger and I went to lunch at a bakery down the hill in Kent.

At breakfast we decided that we were going to drive to Issaquah aka Issy because it had the highest concentration of portals outside of Seattle and levels were low enough that Bryan thought he actually had the gear to take some of 'em down.  In hindsight 6 portals over 4 blocks wasn't particularly dense but at the time it was the mother load.

Off we went to Issy.  We found a place to park closest to all the portals and started our journey.  It wasn't long before Bryan was out of XMP.  Bryan had heard about passcodes that would give you gear, so he got a hold of a google spreadsheet that had 20-30 of these passcodes on it.  He had me pull it up on the iPad and as he ran out of gear I was reading off the passcodes to him.

We walked together while neutralized and claimed all the portals.  Since I didn't have a scanner I got bored and wondered off while he continue to run between the portals waiting for the cool down so he could re-hack and link.  When we finally met up back at the car an hour later I found out that he had encountered his first enemy in person!  I was so bummed I missed it.  Turns out a member of the Enlightened ruled Issy in those days, and he quickly dismantled all of Bryan's work.

I asked Bryan all kinda of questions about the encounter. I quickly realized that my nemesis who owned the Post Office was probably just as human as the guy Bryan met and this was a game and I had no reason to be mad at him.  Suddenly I really wanted to meet an Enlightened enemy out in the field.

As we headed home I checked my g+ and email and still no passcode.

I spent most of the afternoon and evening scouring all the G+ Ingress information I could find.  I was just about to plug in my devices and start getting ready for bed when I got a PM from +Joe Philley with an Invite passcode!  I was so scared that somehow it would expire like all the others I'd tried so I turned on the app and typed in the code right away and OMG my scanner was active!!!!  And I was able to claim the agent name that I wanted, mistyayn.

I was bouncing off the walls excited because I wanted to go claim the Post Office. Being the level headed one that he is Bryan suggests I go outside and do the training.  Wait there's training? Oh yea Bryan had done the training a week before I grabbed my coat and ran outside.  I remember following ADAs instructions very carefully and making sure I paid careful attention because I wanted to be a good agent and I didn't want to look dumb the first time I used my scanner.   When it was time to pick my faction I was so scared of picking the wrong faction that I re-read everything three times just to make sure.

After securing my status as an Agent of the Resistance I wanted to do something!  A check of the scanner revealed that I was a block away from a clump of XM.  I was completely transfixed as the map in my hand moved me closer to the glimmering specs of XM as I walked.  That first time that ADA talked to me after training when I picked up my first clump of XM I knew this was something special and I wanted to be a part of it.

In that moment I realized two things.  First, I was totally hooked.  Second, I was really cold! I was only wearing pajamas and a coat so I needed to get home where it was warm.  On that short walk home I decided my first priority tomorrow night after work was taking down that Post Office and my second priority was figuring out how I was going to keep Bryan and I warm so we could play any time we wanted.

The Early Days of Ingress

Invite Day - 5 : #IngressInvites and First Enemies

In those early days access to Ingress Invite codes was very limited.  There were several ways that you could get an invite the first was to put your email into Ingress.com which I had done but the rumors were swirling that it would take months to get an invite.  So I was doing my homework I found out there were other ways to get invites so I was going to get one as soon as I could.

It turned out I wasn't so could at Option 2 for an invite code, which was to follow +Johnathan Chung and decode his posts to get an invite code.  This was when I quickly realized that decoding was not my strong suit and I'd leave that to people with different skill set then mine.  Option 3 was to follow +Joe Philley non-stop and hope you could type faster then the 30-50 or more people that were trying to type in the same passcode at the same time.   The last option was something I hear was started by +Brandon Badger, post creative ingress related to #ingressinvite and you might be rewarded with an invite code from one of the known Niantic Project people.

I didn't feel particularly creative so I just kept watching +Joe Philley's stream and the #ingrressinvites to see if I could find any inspiration.  Finally I started posting pictures of my dogs with signs saying they needed to be rescued from the Enlightened.  Every day that week I would go to bed disappointed that I hadn't gotten an invite yet.

Well I went to bed disappointed every night except 1.  That was the night +Bryan Kroger came home and announced that the Post Office he had claimed the day before had been taken over by the Enlightened and it was a Level 3! And there was a MASSIVE control field that went from Kent to Tacoma!  In hindsight we were probably a little over dramatic about the scope of the CF or the portal level.  But it didn't matter that was our portal and we were gonna take it back!

In those early days even I succumbed to attachment to portals, but that attachment didn't last very long.  I become more attached to the people then portals.

When we got to the Post Office it took some trial and error to figure out how to fire off XMP Bursters.  At the time there were very few sources of information especially help on how to do things, so you just had to do a bit of trial and error.  After Bryan fired off all of his L1 XMP we realized that a level 3 portal was tough and we needed to find lower level portals to take and more resonators.

At the time I didn't know who that Enlightened player was but he was a high level (At least 4) and I wondered how we'd ever be able to compete with him.  There's been a lot of names over the last year but I think the name on that very first portal was @dessyx (I might be wrong though).  Either way after that night I had an enemy I didn't know who @dessyx was but I wanted that portal back and I was going to get that portal back as soon as I had my scanner.

 Luckily it was the week of Thanksgiving so there were other distractions.  It was time to stop thinking about Ingress and spend time with family.

Here's one of the weird things +Bryan Kroger and I tried to get an #ingressinvite

A year of Ingress - Invite Day - 7

I've heard a lot of talk about Ingress Anniversaries or Ingresaries.  That got me thinking about the early days and how far things have come.  I actually think I have two Ingresaries   Of course there's the day I got my scanner which was November 25th, 2012 but 7 days before that +Bryan Kroger got his scanner.  That was my first glimpse down the rabbit hole.

For about the first hour he had the app installed I was a little bit dismissive of it asking him why would people ever want to play that.  Truth be told I was jealous he found out about it before me and I I've never really handled jealousy well.

After he went through the tutorial he said he was going down the street to collect some "XM" I had no idea what that was or why he was doing it but all of a sudden I was curious and I wanted to know more.  When he got back he told me he was Resistance whatever that meant.

Bryan checked something called "Intel" and he said he thinks there were "portals" down in Kent Station then small movie shopping complex down the hill from our house.  I was still a bit annoyed at this point that I didn't get to play but I begrudgingly agreed to go to Panera Bread for lunch and maybe we could go look for these portal things afterward.

On the ride down I could hear ADAs voice telling us how much XM Bryan had and I was even more curious.

Through lunch we talked about the game and other stuff and I was getting antsy to see how this worked.  After lunch we walked around the building and across the street to the King County Law Library.  This is actually part of the courthouse that was attached to the Regional Justice Center but I had no idea there was a law library in there.  The first of many things I've learned over the next year.

I tried to watch over Bryan's shoulder while he deployed resonators because I wanted to see what was happening.  It was a grey portal so he was the first one to claim that portal and I was so excited.  Then he noticed on the scanner that there was another portal off in the distance, he looked at me and asked what I wanted to do did I want to go with him or go back to the car while he went and claimed the portal.  

It was typical Northwest winter day, cold and drizzly.  But I had a warm coat on and my husband was asking me to go for a walk outside so I was like Hell Yes! Let's Go!  We trekked across this gravel parking lot and and as we got closer he discovered it was the Kent Library.  As he was capturing the portal I realized connected that libraries must be in their default database of portals.  At the same time Bryan realized there was another portal 2 blocks away that was a post office, another possible database to look up!  I was totally on it!  At the time I carried around my large iPad so while he captured the post office I pulled out the iPad and tried looking up library's and post offices.  That was the first version of intel I ever did and I was absolutely giddy!

When Bryan got back to me he said said "I got the keys I think if we go back to the courthouse I can make a control field, do you want to go home or do you want to make a control field?"  I responded the only way I could "Let's go back to the courthouse!".  We made our way back over the gravel driveway and I remember feeling almost a euphoric feeling to being out on an adventure with my husband.  As he created his first control field and we heard ADA say "Good Work" something shifted and I knew I was hooked I would do anything to be a part of this new experience.

I remember on the way home I wanted to go claim the post office closest to our house but Bryan was tired and ready to go home.  I was so incredibly excited the first thing I did when I got home was sign up on Ingress.com for an invite and then came the wait!