Hello, Zoox Explorer at Resorts World Las Vegas in Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I haven’t been as diligent about keeping up with new technology as I was when I was a kid. Young Adam used to be pretty dedicated to reading tech news and trying to adopt as much of it into his life as quickly as possible, but current Adam only notices these things if they are either locally relevant or have advanced to a stage of development where it’s about to have a big impact on society.

Self-driving cars have hit both of those metrics.

With Tesla and Elon Musk having local ties to Nevada and Las Vegas, I’ve noticed them as one of the pioneers of self-driving technology. I’ve never really liked Tesla ever since around 2017 when I took a ride in my aunt and uncle’s Model X and realized how poorly it was built. Although I have not been particularly vocal about my dislike of Tesla ever since Elon Musk’s involvement in politics because I don’t want to be mistaken as some leftist Democrat who is just jumping on the Elon Musk hate bandwagon, my opinions of Tesla are still generally the same. I’ve always thought that Tesla should’ve just been a technology company and not a car manufacturer. With that being said, to my understanding, the work that Tesla conducts in Las Vegas is heavily focused on that technology aspect, which I think is a good thing.

Other companies, like Waymo, have joined in on developing self-driving technology and have outpaced Tesla. When I took a trip to the Phoenix Metropolitan Area in Arizona, I rode around exclusively in Waymos instead of using human-driven rideshare services. This is obviously a big change to society.

I am looking forward to self-driving technology becoming good enough to the point where people won’t have to drive their own vehicles anymore. I still drive my 2018 GMC Canyon gasoline pickup truck; once that breaks down or otherwise becomes inoperable, I expect to buy an electric pickup truck to replace it. I anticipate that to be the last vehicle I buy that I need to drive myself; I think that if I keep my Canyon for a handful more years and then drive my new EV for a decade and a half, self-driving cars should probably be the norm that far into the future.

With all that context in mind, along with knowing that I am optimistic about the future of self-driving vehicles, I’m sure it’s not surprising to hear that I was one of the first people to join the Zoox Explorer program as part of their partnership with Resorts World Las Vegas. Zoox is a company that is also working on self-driving technology like Waymo, and they are at a phase of development where they’re able to test their vehicles on public roads. For the past few years, I have seen quite a few supervised Zoox vehicles driving around Las Vegas for testing; I was excited to hear that they were now ready to be tested fully autonomously.

Zoox had a little booth set up in front of the southern entrance off Goh Tong Way. From here, people who were interested in taking a ride in a Zoox were able to scan a QR code, register for an account, and join the waitlist.

Right around 20 minutes after my friend and I signed up for a demo ride, a Zoox arrived to pick us up. As you can tell from the photographs, the interior of these vehicles are designed to not have a driver at all. There is no driver’s seat or front passenger’s seat; there are just four seats for occupants.

They also don’t look like a normal vehicle with a tapered hood area that encases either the engine in gasoline vehicles or a front trunk in electric vehicles; instead, they are basically just rectangular prisms (which I imagine might not be the best for aerodynamics).

Once inside, there was a message on the control screen welcoming us to the ride and briefing us on the estimated length of our demo ride. Shortly thereafter, a button popped up that allowed us to begin the ride.

There is a little screen next to each occupant from which the climate control and music can be adjusted.

People sometimes ask me (presumably as a joke) how I can prove that I went somewhere or did something if I take pictures of things around me, but not of myself. Well, here is a remarkably low-quality picture of myself sitting in the Zoox.

There were two demo rides available—a short one just around Resorts World Las Vegas, and a long one all the way up the Las Vegas Strip. Interestingly, our Zoox decided to have a mind of its own and not follow the mapped route; instead, it took us all the way out to Koval Lane. Here is a photograph of the MGM Grand at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue.

When I mentioned this detour to a Zoox staff member after the conclusion of the ride, he said that the system sometimes takes different routes to avoid construction if it knows that it will be stuck in congestion.

Eventually, it found its way back onto Las Vegas Boulevard. The vehicle has a dual-pane sunroof, which acted as a convenient window through which we could see the lights of the Strip.

After about half an hour, the Zoox completed its loop and returned us back to Resorts World.

I found most of the ride to be not too different from what I experienced in a Waymo. However, there were two things that were significantly worse.

First, the headrest is extremely hard. It feels like it is an insanely dense block of foam or something. Not only does it jut out a bit so it feels like your head is leaning forward the entire time, but it is so solid that, if the Zoox ever has to brake hard and your head gets thrown back, it will impact with the foam and probably give you a pretty bad headache. In Waymos, I liked that the headrest was basically just a regular vehicle headrest that was firm enough to give proper support but still soft enough to be comfortable.

Second, the seats do not recline at all. This is a problem for someone like me who gets easily car sick. In Waymos, I’m able to sit in the front passenger seat and recline the seat back pretty far so that I’m in a relaxed, leaned position and my motion sickness is mitigated. However, in the Zoox, I had to sit upright the entire time, and my motion sickness got bad enough near the end that it almost felt like I had to vomit.

Overall, I thought this was a great experience, and I’m glad I was able to participate in the program and volunteer some of my time to test out a new autonomous vehicle. To be clear, I did not get compensated to write this blog post, and I didn’t even receive a special private invitation or anything; I just saw that this was a thing and tried it out along with the rest of the general public.

I don’t know how long this testing phase will stay open, but if you’re on or around the Las Vegas Strip and want to check it out, I think it would serve as a fun way to spend half an hour.

I think this would be especially compelling if you’ve never ridden in a Waymo before. This wasn’t as novel of an experience for me as it could have been because of my plethora of Waymo rides from Phoenix, but I’ve heard from people who have never been in a fully self-driving car before that their first time was pretty surreal.

I mentioned earlier in this blog post that I’m looking to buy an electric pickup truck as my next vehicle. I decided to save this photo for last because it’s not fully relevant to Zoox (apart from the Zoox vehicles also being electric), but I drove a Ford F-150 Lightning as my rental vehicle while I was in Las Vegas.

(For those wondering, the reason I had a rental and didn’t just drive my own personal pickup truck is because I recently flew from Hà Nội to Los Angeles and had a small window of time to head back home to Las Vegas before needing to return to Los Angeles again to attend an event, so instead of driving to Las Vegas, I parked my truck at my friend’s home and flew.)

When I rent vehicles, I always select the pickup truck class because I’m used to driving pickup trucks and feel more comfortable in taller vehicles with better visibility. Luckily for me, apparently Avis just classes all full-size pickup trucks together, regardless of whether they are a basic trim or an EV. I figured this was a good opportunity to test out a Ford F-150 Lightning for the first time, so I specifically asked for it when I went to the rental counter, and the customer service representative gladly fulfilled my request.

The charging infrastructure in the Las Vegas Valley isn’t the best if you don’t have access to the Tesla Supercharger network (which I did not, because the F-150 Lightning rental did not come with a proper adapter to allow me to plug in a Tesla Charging Connector into the currently more common CCS connector for non-Tesla EVs). I ended up having to drive down to the Shell Recharge south of South Point for fast charging, as a majority of other locations I found only had ~7 kW charging rate instead of the full ~180 kW DC. Unfortunately, the price there was pretty expensive, and considering the kilowatt-hours per mile used by the F-150 Lightning, it was barely any cheaper than if I had a gasoline F-150 with an EcoBoost engine.

With that being said, I heard that Tesla is working on making their facilities more universal and friendly to other non-Tesla vehicles as well, and they will allegedly retrofit their stations to have built-in adapters. On top of that, charging technology is only going to get better, so in a handful of years when I’m ready to buy a new pickup truck, I imagine that charging will no longer be much of an issue.

The F-150 Lighting was probably the most stable and smooth ride I’ve ever felt in a pickup truck. I love that the heavy batteries bring the center of gravity down low, so it significantly reduces the chances of a dangerous rollover in the case of a collision, and it overall just makes the vehicle feel more firm and solid. I felt like I could easily take curves faster than my smaller mid-size pickup truck and still not have as much of a sensation of inertia from centripetal force.

If a car rental company has an F-150 Lightning available, I am definitely asking for it again in the future. Once you get the hang of it, charging at a fast charge station isn’t too bad—you plug it into the charger, get back in the vehicle, turn on the air conditioning or heat to stay comfortable (without needing to idle the engine like you would with a gasoline vehicle), plug your laptop into the household outlet that F-150s have, and treat the truck like a little mobile office.

As for Zoox, I’m looking forward to seeing how they iterate on the interior design of their vehicles. Hopefully they implement some more comfort features in the cabin so that I can consider using them on a routine basis without needing to be worried about motion sickness.

 

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Hello, “The Bazaar: Catch the Cash,” a tournament by PK Gaming in Hanoi, Vietnam

by   •   Face, Games, Highlights, Tempo
 

I already mentioned this in my blog post reviewing my flights on EVA Air from Los Angeles to Hanoi, but one of the major reasons I decided to travel to Hà Nội, Việt Nam was because my company Tempo’s game The Bazaar was having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn. This event happened earlier today (or yesterday, if you convert Hà Nội’s local time zone to my home time zone in Las Vegas).

As you probably expected, while I was in attendance, I took a lot of photographs.

The entryway to the gaming café had a banner advertising the tournament, which invited competitors to wander the bazaar in a paid event with a total cash prize pool of US$750.00.

The interior also had a banner, this one being significantly taller and larger.

Tempo’s Lead of People and Culture was also in attendance, and he was responsible for bringing over a bunch of prizes for the competitors.

There were some embroidered hoodies…

… some specially-branded mousepads in partnership with PK Gaming…

… and the grand prize trophy, a Founder’s Edition collectible statue of Dooley, one of the characters from The Bazaar.

I showed up pretty early, so while the venue was still almost empty, I had an opportunity to walk around and explore the rest of the gaming café.

As the players started trickling in, some of them got set up on the computers in the competition area and started warming up.

After everyone found their way to the café, the tournament started with a small opening ceremony by the casters.

Once all the rules were explained, the players took their positions and started playing.

The event was live streamed on Tempo’s Twitch channel from the “Alaska Zone” streaming booths.

This is a shot I got of the person who eventually went on to win the entire tournament.

As a reminder, I work solely on the corporate side of Tempo and have no involvement in game design or game development pretty much whatsoever, to the extent that I have literally never even played a single game of The Bazaar. It was an amusing experience going around and looking at people’s screens, only to be completely clueless as to what’s actually happening in the game.

The main stage of the gaming café was used to play the live stream for in-person spectators.

One of the spectators, of course, was the Dooley statue.

Once in a while, players would be brought into the casting booth after finishing a round so that they could get interviewed about their most recent game.

The tournament was going on for longer than I expected, so I decided to order some food from the on-site kitchen.

Their menu was in Vietnamese, and I couldn’t understand what their entrée options were, so I just went with the recommendation of one of the staff members at the gaming café. I ended up with some grilled chicken, vegetables, and white rice. This actually ended up being pretty unexpectedly delicious.

A handful of hours into the tournament, we were approaching the end, with only a couple players left needing to finish their final run.

I believe some people left early, but those who wanted to stick around gathered around the stage area to watch the final moments of gameplay.

Upon the conclusion of the tournament, the winner was crowned, and he received his limited edition Dooley statue.

In addition to the trophy, both the first place winner and the runner-ups received an envelope containing their cash prizes, and pretty much all participants got some form of consolation prize, be it a set of earbuds, a desk mat, or apparel.

After all the prizes were distributed, the casters gave their closing speech.

The tournament organizers hired an actual, professional photographer to take pictures throughout the event. I’m not sure what his name is so I can’t give proper credit at the moment, but I found these on PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn’s Facebook page in the Cộng Đồng The Bazaar group.

He captured this shot of me helping set some of the technical specifications of the live stream software to ensure a smooth broadcast…

… as well as this shot of me joining the casting booth for a little bit while the Vietnamese caster was busy helping tally up the final results.

Here’s a screenshot taken of the live broadcast from the short period during which I was filling in for one of the casters.

It is very amusing (and quite difficult) trying to be a commentator for a game that you’ve literally never personally played before and hardly even know the mechanics for. The other caster next to me hard carried both the play-by-play and color commentary, while I mainly contributed by telling stories of Tempo’s past and how The Bazaar came to become what it is today.

Before parting ways, we took a group photograph with everyone who stayed until the end of the event.

During my time at Tempo, I’ve been a member of the production teams behind a decent number of live events, so this one wasn’t particularly special for me. However, I could tell that everyone else in attendance was very excited for it, which was nice.

I went into this thinking the turnout would be in the low multi-hundreds. I didn’t know how or from where I established that expectation, but as you can see from the photographs, there were nowhere near even a single hundred competitors. With that being said, I might just be used to running events taking place in larger cities for more well-known games, and it’s possible that the turnout for “Catch the Cash” was still considered a success given the circumstances.

I thought the gaming café was decent and comparable in quality to some of the smaller and lower-budget gaming cafés you might find scattered throughout less populus areas of the United States. The food, though, was incredible. I found the chef and the literal full-blown kitchen to be amazing and comparable in quality to a very good street food vendor or a small family-owned restaurant that focuses on replicating authentic flavors derived from their local cuisines. I had two meals there—one on tournament day and one on the day prior during a walk-through preview—and both entrées were delicious.

With that being said, I had a persistent headache and an overall miserable time being in PK Gaming’s facility due to the smoking room.

Cigarette smoking is far more common in Việt Nam than it is in the United States. It is also far more socially and culturally accepted, so this gaming café had a designated smoking room indoors, directly in the center of the café. The smoking room had a door, but every time someone opened the door to go in or out, waves of cigarette smoke would escape and spread throughout the rest of the building.

As long as there’s good ventilation, it’s fine, right? Well, from what I could tell, it felt like they had no ventilation. They had fans running everywhere, so the cigarette smoke would expeditiously get blown around into all corners of the building to make sure everyone would smell it, while none of it got sucked up into the vents to be exchanged with fresh outdoor air.

Marinating in cigarette smoke for about 7 hours was horrific, and that alone was single-handedly enough to make me hate the entire thing. It is insane to me that everyone who showed up to compete had to be subjected to degrading their health from fairly dense second-hand smoke because some people were too lazy to spend one extra minute walking outdoors before smoking.

 

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Hello Open Sauce 2025

by   •   Conventions, Face, Highlights
 

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not explicitly ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me for this review, and did not have an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material incentive to attend Open Sauce 2025 by way of free admission, the comparable public retail value of which amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00. All other expenses were self-funded.

 
After I had a great time last year at Open Sauce 2024, my friend Billie-Rae, an executive of and the head of marketing at the company running Open Sauce, invited me to attend again this year. Open Sauce 2024 was my all-time favorite convention, so I was happy to accept the invitation and head back to the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend, this year to the San Mateo County Event Center.

As a reminder, the reason why I liked Open Sauce so much last year is because it felt more like a large science fair than it did a regular convention. I’ve been to many conventions, both as part of my work at Tempo and for personal leisure, but many of them feel very commercialized. Open Sauce stood out in that it was a collection of people who were genuinely interested in science and wanted to show off and talk about their experiments and creations. Other conventions’ exhibition halls feel like a gigantic collection of advertisements, but Open Sauce’s exhibition halls are filled with passionate scientists and technology enthusiasts.

The advertisers and sponsors that do still go to Open Sauce are integrated very well and showcase their product in a way where it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to get you to buy their product, but rather, they’re demonstrating what their product can do and are leaving it up to you to decide. Sponsors whose primary objective is brand exposure are still integrated naturally; for example, PCBWay was back again this year with another batch of branded metallic circuit board credential badges that people could bring to their booth and personally solder components onto to make it light up.

When I received my itinerary this year, I noticed that there were fewer special experiences for creators and guests compared to last year. These special activities and parties were some of my favorite things from last year, so it wasn’t great news when I found out that there was less going on in 2025. On top of that, the one off-site activity they had was just a repeat of last year—a tour of Adam Savage’s workshop, “The Cave.” With that being said, I think we were just extra spoiled last year; there were still plenty of opportunities for people to congregate and network with each other this year, which I think is the priority for most of the creators and special guests when they attend events like this.

In a similar vein, there were a lot more content creators, members of the press, and special guests this year. Last year, there was a fairly limited scope of people in attendance, with a vast majority of the creators and guests being science and technology YouTubers. I liked this because these YouTubers felt, for a lack of a better word, normal. They were all pleasant and approachable people, and none of them had any of the undesirable characteristics that you usually find in Twitch live streaming or influencer culture of being self-centered, arrogant, and out of touch with reality. This year, I think there were more people who extended outside the “normal scientist” bubble and gave off a mild form of the “sheltered influencer” energy. With that being said, I think there was still a solid filter with regards to who was invited, and the spotlighted creators were nowhere near as bad as what you’d find in live streaming or video gaming conventions.

(Random side note: While I was in the creator lounge, I managed to meet Alan Melikdjanian, owner of the Captain Disillusion YouTube channel. I have watched his videos for a long time and not only admire his video editing skills but also his philosophy of exposing and combating misinformation through educating the public. We had a nice chat while waiting in line to get our share of catered lunch. I don’t really get starstruck when meeting people, but I think Captain Disillusion is as close as you can get to getting me starstruck for now, so I’m glad I was able to run into him at Open Sauce.)

No matter what the invited guest experience was like, the most important part of Open Sauce was still the exhibition hall. I concluded that, no matter how many special activities there were or who the special guests were, as long as the exhibition halls were the same as last year, it would still be a great convention. Fortunately, Open Sauce did indeed maintain its core identity, and the passionate energy of the exhibit halls remained the same as last year. I noticed that the convention this year was quite a bit larger than last year, so I was actually fairly impressed that they managed to scale it up to this degree, yet still not lose its charming identity in the exhibition halls.

My credentials gave me access to the exhibition halls across three total days, and I spent a good chunk of time on all three days exploring the halls. I walked multiple rounds through all three halls, made sure to try all the demonstrations I could, and even kept track of which ones I missed due to long lines so that I could go back and see it on a subsequent day. Just like last year, everyone was very welcoming and inviting, and I had a great time hearing about and trying out all the exhibits.

 
I’ll start with my favorite exhibit from this year, four-dimensional Counter-Strike. This little booth was set up with two computers from which you could play Counter-Strike, except some of the weapons were hooked up to real-life stimulants surrounding the gaming area.

Detonating a flashbang within range of your opponent would cause blindingly bright lights to turn on next to their computer station. Getting hit with an explosive grenade would cause the entire table to vibrate and make a rattling noise. Walking into the smoke of a smoke bomb would prompt a leaf blower to blow air in your face while a mist sprayed on you from behind.

My second favorite exhibit was a backpack with a motor inside that would gauge your lean and counter-rotate to balance you. The problem is that the motor is pretty heavy and it takes a split second for it to actually counter-rotate properly, so it perpetually feels like the backpack is both trying to kill you and save your life at the same time, which was a very amusing experience.

Here I am getting convinced into finding a Porygon in a Wii game… and ultimately failing.

Hello egg.

There was a crate with a sign that said “Open the crate… if you dare.” I dared.

Next to the daring crate was a computer with Super Crate Box on it. I don’t really play games anymore, but when I did, I was a keyboard-and-mouse gamer and am notoriously bad at using gaming controllers. Needless to say, I performed catastrophically poorly.

Hello hat.

I’m also notoriously bad at using joysticks because the movement feels vague to me and I can’t ever really tell how far in a direction I have to move the joystick in order for the command to register. … Again, needless to say, I performed monumentally poorly.

What I did better at was Crossy Road, but with real-life physical controls. Every time I jumped, a webcam would detect my movement and advance the bird one lane. I managed to get to the river… before tragically diving straight in and drowning.

This is a game of shuffleboard where the weights have sensors in them so they can detect where it ended up and automatically keep score for you. Unfortunately, they weren’t working that day, so I guess you could consider them to be extremely fragile hockey pucks instead.

This was a game where you had to keep a baby alive. I contributed to the effort by rocking the baby back and forth to relieve it of its tiredness, but then some random guy decided to grief and reached over to light a paper towel roll on fire (in-game), so I gave up and moved onto the next exhibit.

I think the objective of this game was to hack into some girl’s computer and read all her personal information. I couldn’t tell what else I needed to do beyond that, though.

This was a game about sushi where the controller was a samurai sword. You quickly unsheathe and sheathe the sword to slice the fish on screen and turn them into sashimi, and you press a button on the sword to block the aggressive fish from reaching you. This was a rhythm game, but the timing of the music was a bit off, so I didn’t do too well, but I got a hang of the delay later on and compensated, which made things better.

This game helped me discover that apparently I’m not very good at roguelikes either. At this point, it’s a mystery as to how I managed to help run a decently successful esports company several years ago.

Here is another photograph of me struggling with yet again another game.

Open Sauce this year had an outdoor section. There was a train out there blowing bubbles, so I decided to take a picture next to it. I didn’t realize how deceptively large the throughput of the bubbles were, and I managed to get soap residue all over my glasses from when the bubbles popped after hitting my face.

This chair is designed to force you to have great, balanced posture when seated; failure to do so will result in the stool tilting and trying to throw you off the edge. As you can see, I did a stellar job and was not at risk of drilling my face into the concrete block next to me at any point throughout the experience whatsoever.

This exhibit tested to see how good you were at balancing; you’d place one foot in the center and then use the other foot to move the gray sliders to match the distances as outlined on the screen beside the device.

Even though you might not be able to tell, I’m in this next photo as well; it apparently uses a camera to see what’s in front of it, but warps the image using circuitry in a pattern determined by which button you press on the controller.

My third favorite exhibit of Open Sauce this year was a robot that tore apart a microwave. As you can see, it was very popular when the demonstration was happening, so I wasn’t really able to get a good photograph of the destruction.

This was an activity where you press buttons to control a robot and attempt to knock out your opponent. I played against my cameraman and defeated him ruthlessly.

This was a modified version of Street Fighter where taking damage causes you to receive an electric shock through the joystick. I figured out a way to cheese it by only controlling the joystick with my fingernails instead of with the fleshy part of my fingers, but switched back to holding the joystick normally for the spirit of fair competition. I, again, played against my cameraman… but this time, I was the one who got defeated ruthlessly.

Here are some more photographs of random things I found interesting around the exhibition halls and stages.

And finally, here is a picture of me with one of my friends in the creator interview area. She agreed to be on my blog, but didn’t want her identity disclosed, so this is the solution I came up with.

Overall, Open Sauce remains my all-time favorite convention, with Open Sauce 2025 joining Open Sauce 2024 as my top two.

There are some elements that I liked better in 2024, and there are other elements that I liked better in 2025. However, the one thing I was overwhelmingly impressed at with 2025 is how much it had grown, yet still maintained its identity as a science fair instead of falling into the expected pipeline of becoming more like a conference. I think a lot of variables had to be controlled and accounted for to pull that off, which I applaud the Open Sauce team for.

I took a lot of pictures with con-goers, some of whom know me from my recent collaborations and guest appearances with some of my friends, while others dated back to my esports years with Tempo Storm; if you’re posting photos of us together on social media, feel free to tag me so I can browse through them.

 

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Hello, High Roller at the LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I’ve been living in Las Vegas for almost five years now, since 2018 (this excludes the couple years I spent road tripping across the United States and living out of hotel rooms), but there are still a lot of iconic things in the city that I haven’t experienced. Up until yesterday, one of those things was taking a ride on the High Roller Ferris wheel at Caesars Entertainment’s LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip.

One of my friends is in town for a work conference near the central Strip, and while we were going for a walk around the LINQ Promenade together after picking up her admission credentials, the entrance to High Roller caught our attention. There was no wait and the box office was nearly empty, so we made an impulse decision to go for a ride around the wheel.

The wheel constantly spins at a very slow rate and you enter your pod while it still in motion, sort of like how you mount a bench on a ski lift. Because of how few people there were on a Tuesday late afternoon, my friend and I were able to get our own private pod without needing to share with any other parties.

I used to live in high-rise condos on the Las Vegas Strip, so as we ascended in altitude, I got waves of nostalgia looking out onto the city.

A little after ten minutes into our climb, we were high enough that we passed the elevation at which I lived in my old condos.

My friend took some photos of me in the pod. Here is me being confused why she is holding the camera up so high…

… and here is me looking like I somehow just now finally noticed that they put the Sphere there.

About 15 minutes into our ride, we reached the summit of 550 feet (~168 meters). From the top, I was able to get some great 360° views and captured some nice photographs of the sunset.

Soon after, we began our descent, and after about half an hour, our loop was over.

Going into the ride, I assumed that I would only end up liking it a moderate amount because of how desensitized I am to the view after living in high-rise condos, staying in rooms on upper floors of Strip hotels, and riding in aircraft over Las Vegas. However, surprisingly, I enjoyed High Roller a lot more than I expected.

I imagine a big part of it was attributed to the fact that we were able to get a fun, private experience in our own personal pod. There was amazing lighting due to the pod being fully surrounded by large glass windows and the setting sun shining in, so my friend had a great time taking glowing selfies. I was also able to roam around freely taking a lot of photographs of the view without feeling like I was distracting or detracting from others’ experience.

Apparently High Roller has flexible pricing depending on demand and time of day, with adult tickets starting at US$29 each and sometimes being eligible for discounts if you purchase ahead of time. My friend and I ended up paying US$33 each at the box office, which isn’t exactly cheap, but also wasn’t too bad in my opinion.

 

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The Adventures of TrugTrug and Parkzer in WoW Classic’s 20th Anniversary hardcore realms

by   •   Face, World of Warcraft
 

I don’t play video games that much anymore, but once in a while, I’ll still sign back on if a friend invites me to play.

Last year, my friend Doug Wreden and I played World of Warcraft: Classic hardcore on and off for about a month and had a pretty good time. It was a nostalgic experience for Doug; and for me, I enjoyed trying Classic for the first time and seeing from what the modern-day World of Warcraft evolved. I’m usually not a big fan of hardcore or permadeath game modes because I have very limited time to play games and I don’t want to constantly lose my progress and just do the starting area over and over again, but Doug finds softcore modes to be boring, and hardcore did technically add a lot more suspense and tension to the gameplay.

This year, Doug and I decided to join a guild called <OnlyFangs> and do another run of World of Warcraft: Classic in hardcore mode on the new realms released as part of the 20th Anniversary celebration. <OnlyFangs> is a guild generally reserved for Twitch streamers and other online content creators, and although I wouldn’t really consider myself to be a content creator, they were adding some additional twists to the gameplay to make it more interesting, so I still joined.

The guild has competitions among the different races, so naturally, as initiation for joining the guild, you have to take a sorting quiz to determine the race you’re allowed to play. I answered all the questions and ended up with Orc.

On the day of launch, I created an Orc Hunter and spawned into the Valley of Trials alongside hundreds of other players who had gotten in right as the servers opened.

Doug also created his character—a Troll Shaman named “TrugTrug,” a hybrid of “troll” and “DougDoug.” I just named myself “Parkzer,” but after seeing Doug’s character’s name, I regretted not naming myself “Orkzer” instead.

My first near-death experience promptly came at level 7 when Doug and I were on the Echo Isles questing. I wasn’t paying close-enough attention to World of Warcraft because I was distracted answering questions from my Twitch chat and I didn’t notice that my health was getting extremely low. I quickly ran away and dragged a Durotar Tiger into a group of other players in hopes that they would save me. Luckily, a fellow Orc named Orcadontis (who I imagine is a professional orthodontist) was nearby and finished off the tiger, saving my life.

And if you’re curious, the reason it says “YOU ARE LITERALLY TROLLING” and “RUN AWAY” in big letters on the center of my screen is because I use an add-on called WeakAuras, which allows you to make custom graphics that trigger based on conditions you specify. I set up an alert that blares an air horn and shows that bouncing text in the center of my screen in case I get low of health and don’t realize that I have to run away.

At level 10, Hunters gain the ability to tame a pet. Doug wanted his Twitch chat to be able to have agency over our gameplay, so he did a series of polls that determined that my first pet would be a crab named “Crabzer.”

… Crabzer promptly died because I sent him into a group of level 10 enemies when he was only level 6. Usually you can just revive your pet, but to add to the intensity of hardcore more, Doug wanted my pet to be hardcore as well. This meant Crabzer was dead forever. Doug required me to participate in a memorial ritual by removing all my armor and laying down (almost) naked next to Crabzer’s corpse.

My next pet was a crocodile named Croczer. Unsurprisingly, Croczer faced the same fate as Crabzer when we were in a cave and a random Mage pulled a ton of enemies, so I sent Croczer in to tank and he succumbed to overwhelming damage. … Yes, we did the same ritual for Croczer too.

It’s a running joke that I love to stop playing the main content and go off to fish in video games, specifically in MMORPGs where fishing is almost never the primary objective and is no more than a side task. World of Warcraft is no exception to this, so after Doug signed off for the night, I joined some of my Twitch viewers on a journey to Mulgore and Thunder Bluff because they said there were some nice, scenic fishing spots there.

The next day, Doug and I found a party of guildmates and cleared Ragefire Chasm, our first dungeon.

Later that night off-stream, I finally got a chance to level up my fishing. While in Orgrimmar, I was joined by Thor Hall from Pirate Software, with whom I had a pleasant chat using the Proximity Voice add-on. After reaching level 150 fishing, we took a ship and ventured to Booty Bay to purchase a special item—a book that would unlock the next tier of fishing. There is an overall level 20 requirement for that though in addition to the fishing level requirement, so I wasn’t yet able to read the book I had just bought.

On the fourth day of our adventure, we ran into an escort quest where the escortee has a very long respawn timer. In order to try and get as many people in on the quest as possible as to minimize the wait time, we partied up and invited someone from our guild as well. Hilariously, our guildmate had an add-on that automatically accepts, turns in, and advances all quests, so he managed to initiate the escort before Doug and I managed to turn in our quests and pick up the next one in the chain for the escort.

We stuck around for the respawn and waited for the next cycle. Being the brilliant, attentive, responsive gamer I am, I proceeded to miss turning in my quest for a second cycle in a row. Here I am eating a protein bar and realizing that the escortee was departing without me.

Back in town, I was reunited with Orcadontis, the guy who had saved me from the Durotar Tiger over ten levels ago.

He was roleplaying being ill and giving me dental advice with his dying breath, but my absolute favorite thing to do in roleplay scenarios is to pretend like I don’t understand what’s going on and breaking the fourth wall. As Orcadontis gasped that his death was approaching, I replied “no you’re fine, you’re at 100% health,” then walked away.

On day 5, we reached level 20 and learned our next set of important skills. For Doug’s Shaman, this was Ghost Wolf, a spell that turns him into wolf form and increases movement speed by 40%. For my Hunter, it was Aspect of the Cheetah, a spell that grants me 30% increased movement speed at the cost of being dazed for four seconds if I take damage while in cheetah form. Note that Ghost Wolf is materially and substantially better than Aspect of the Cheetah.

After doing a round of quests, Doug and I were returning to town. I had my character set to auto-follow Doug while I was answering questions from my Twitch chat. Doug said that he was going to run through a group of enemies, so I mindlessly said “ok” and continued talking with Twitch chat.

Remember how I mentioned that, not only is my movement speed buff weaker than Doug’s, but I also get dazed when I get hit? Doug was able to run through the enemies fine, but when I ran in after him, I got hit once and got slowed to a fraction of my movement speed.

From here, I had a truly next-level reaction to what was happening, composed of the following series of events:

  1. Spend five seconds looking around in confusion, trying to gauge how much trouble I am actually in.
  2. Spend an additional three seconds tabbing over to Discord to unmute myself so I can tell Doug I am in trouble.
  3. Try to kill the thing that is attacking me, then give up after two seconds.
  4. Try to turn off Aspect of the Cheetah so enemy attacks stop refreshing my daze, but realize that the hotkey I assigned to that was Alt+0, which is impossible for me to hit without either taking my left fingers off the movement keys or taking my right hand off my mouse.
  5. Bring my mouse pointer down to click the Aspect of the Cheetah button to turn it off, but misclick and start channeling Mend Pet instead.
  6. Finally click the correct button to turn off Aspect of the Cheetah, though not before having my daze reset for another 4 seconds.
  7. Try to run away, then realize that the retreat path I was taking was directly towards another camp filled with five more enemies.
  8. Use a health potion, but then forget to use the two other items on my hotbar that would have rooted an enemy and healed me more, thus potentially increasing my chances of survival.
  9. Run off a cliff to try and de-aggro the now four enemies carving line art into my back.
  10. Try to land on a small platform not too far down, miss, slide down the whole face of the entire cliff, then die of fall damage.

And the best part? Doug would have been perfectly fine, but after I unmuted and let him know that I had aggro, he turned around and ran back into the gargantuan group of enemies to try and help me. Even better, note that I had already wasted eight seconds at that point, so he was very far away and it’s not like there was anything he could’ve done anymore anyway.

He also died.

From what I gathered during my post-death debriefing session with Doug, when he announced that he was going to run through a group of enemies, what I was supposed to do was stop following him, split off from him, go all the way around the group of enemies via a different path by myself, and meet back up with him in town afterwards.

This was a pretty ridiculous way to die, and I’m going to be traveling soon anyway, so I’m not too disappointed at our demises. Many hardcore deaths are fairly anti-climactic (e.g., you’re fighting something and just end up taking too much damage too quickly and suddenly die out of nowhere), so I feel like this was definitely one of the more interesting ways for our run to end.

We’re not going to be creating new characters right away, though I guess there’s nothing stopping us from trying again at some point in the future…

 

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Hello, Smith Tower in Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington

by   •   Face, Travel
 

I’m in Seattle again for a convention coming up this weekend, but I flew in a few days early to spend time with my friend Dani while I’m in town. One of the things we decided to do was get a guided tour of the Smith Tower in Pioneer Square.

Unfortunately, our timing was unlucky and the tower was closed for a private event shortly after our guided tour, so we didn’t have an opportunity to spend additional time after our tour walking around the exhibits. (They invited us for complementary general admission for a self-guided tour to finish exploring the tower on a later date to make up for it, though.)

Here are some photos I took during our tour:

On the observation floor, there was a chair that is said by legends to cause young, single women who sit in it to soon find and marry their future husband. Dani insisted I sit in it so she could take a picture of me.

Here are some photos of Seattle from the wrap-around observation balcony:

Before we left, we used the photo station on the observation floor to take a few souvenir pictures. As usual, I am ecstatic to be there, as you can tell.

I enjoyed our guided tour. Dani and I were the only ones who attended for that time slot, so we got a very personalized experience.

Dani loves the architecture of the building, so our tour guide focused on the history of the construction of the Smith Tower, the unique elements and components of its construction, and its various structural improvements implemented throughout the years. He also took us to areas outside of where the museum signs were pointing, so I suspect that we might have gotten access to some exclusive areas that are not usually shown to regular visitors.

With my background in law enforcement and interest in criminology, our tour guide also focused on the crimes that used to take place in the offices of Smith Tower and their impact in current wiretapping technology. I’ve always found the concept of double agents, re-doubled agents, and triple agents to be very interesting, and I found those aspects of the crimes to be particularly intriguing. I was also impressed at the ciphers used to transmit information over radio signals disguised as nightly bedtime stories.

On top of the topics being aligned with our interests, I think we also rolled a good tour guide who excelled at storytelling, as he was able to relay all that information in a compelling and captivating manner.

 

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