Rant and "Revelation"

Hi!  Okay, so I have a rant and a revelation, hence the title of this post.  I've gotten much better at naming posts since I had my first blog at 11-12ish...much, much, MUCH better.  Even since I first had this blog.  No, seriously, go look at old blog post names....
Well, to start with...I'm going to rant, that way you have a maybe treat at the end of this.  And this rant may leak into SEVERAL rants.
First off.  What's wrong with Pokemon Go?  I see so many people posting about how people playing Pokemon Go need to "Go" out and get a job.  I also know several people who play Pokemon go who DO have jobs and DO separate their Pokemon life from their Work life AND their personal life.
Also, I'm not aware if this is common knowledge, but people have been playing video games since...at least the 80s, I believe...and to my knowledge this is one of the few video games that require a person to leave their house to get far in it.  MOST video games, you have to PAY money to get far in it.
For those of you who don't know, Pokemon Go is a Pokemon game made by Niantic (not Nintendo), that requires you to leave your house to catch Pokemon, rather than travel in-game, but not in real-life, you travel in real-life to travel in-game.
There are places called Pokestops, and you have to go to them to pick up Pokeballs, and other things (I don't fully understand), and also Pokegyms, which I don't really understand either.  I've never actually played a Pokemon game other than Pokemon Showdown, although I would like to.  A lot of these Pokestops and gyms are at churches...which...yes...means people are going to those churches!  In fact, a lot of churches have been using this as outreach.
There are also people that I've seen on my friendslist on Facebook inviting others to go on road trips to different towns with them, to look for Pokemon!  I mean, that's great!  Actually getting out and about!  Spending time with people!  Talking about something (even if all it is is Pokemon, that's SOMETHING)!
From talking to one of my friends who plays the game, she struggles with depression and anxiety, and this has been great for her!  Yes, she still struggles with depression, but she said that it's lifted her overall mood, and I know she isn't alone.
For a person who may struggle with social anxiety, and talking with others, especially strangers, this is fantastic.  You see another person playing Pokemon Go?  You actually have something to talk about, rather than struggling through small talk.  It's like seeing someone read your favorite book, or wearing a shirt from a TV show or movie you like...you might say something to them, when you never would have spoken to them before.
But I still see people posting things about how people playing Pokemon Go, especially adults that play, should stop playing the video games, and go get a job.  I don't see people doing that with Candy Crush, or Minecraft, or Undertale, or League of Legends, or really any game...other than, oddly enough, the game that has people actually doing something.  And that frustrates me!
Okay.  Now that was the rant.  Time for a mini rant and the revelation.
Marriage and college.  I often hear people saying not to rush into marriage, but if you decide to take a year off of college, you are rarely encouraged, but rather told that you should go immediately into college!  Even if you don't know what you want to major in, or minor in, and really just want to take a year or two off, work a bit, then go back.  What's up with that?  I mean, neither should be taken lightly, but why rush someone into college when they aren't ready, while discouraging someone from marriage when they are ready, or when they haven't even said they're getting married super soon?
Okay, mini rant over.
I've figured out my minor!  As most of you know (this isn't bear college I'm talking about now, it's what I'm doing after bear college.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, I mentioned it in THIS blog post.), I am planning to take a year off of school, then go back for the 2017-2018 year, where I will major in education.  I would love to be a teacher, but even more than that, I would love to be a daycare worker, or even a nanny.  So I have had my major in place for about two years, give or take.
Recently, my minor was finally decided.  And it will beeeee.... BUSINESS.
Why business?  As most of you also know, I hate math, and will probably never open a big huge business.  However....  I plan to work until I have children, but after that, I don't want my child to go to daycare, especially not when they're a baby, so, in order to stay with my child and be sure I know what kind of treatment they are receiving, I want to open my own home daycare, so I can take care of my child(ren), and still have a bit of income.
Also, even if I don't have children, a business degree ensures that I am allowed by law to teach business classes!
So...there you have it.  A rant, a mini-rant, and a revelation.
Tune in next time to...well...see/here whatever comes to mind!
~Katie

Business Teaching Game?

Okay, so...this game isn't exactly a "teaching" game at all.  It's called Flight Rising an is a game completely centered around dragons.  You breed them, train them in battle, feed them, name them, change their genes around, etc.  Where am I getting that it's a business teaching game?!
Well, also, in this game you do a thing called "gathering", four of the gathering types produces food for you dragons, while the remaining two provide you with other items that you don't need to survive in the game, but can give you cool things.

The way that gathering can help with business type skills is that you decide where you need to gather and how much you need to gather there.  Do most of your dragons eat plants, but you have some dragons that eat meat and you have absolutely zero meat?  Maybe you should go hunting.  Are your food stores all stocked up?  Well, why not dig or scavenge?

Then, with the things you've scavenged or dug up, you can go to the Auction House, and sell them!  But oh no!  What do I price my "white rook" for?!  All you have to do is figure out how much other people are selling their white rooks for, then price your white rook at the same or a little lower.  Or...if the lowest price you could sell it for is less than the price you'd get for selling it back to the store...your best bet is to either sell it back to the store, or hang onto it until the price for white rooks goes back up.

You find all kinds of things you can sell, in your "hoard".  It has different tabs for different things.  You decide what you want to sell and what you want to keep.  Some things, it's better to hang onto.  For example, there's a place in Flight Rising called the "coliseum", which is where your dragons can battle either other player's dragons, or monsters.  I stick to battling monsters.  But they need battle items.  If you have a lightning dragon and a fire dragon, but you only have ability stones for a nature dragon, you might want to sell the nature battle items and get some lightning and fire battle items!

There's also a place in Flight Rising called the "trading post".  At the trading post, there's one place where you can get one thing for free every day, another place where someone buys your items for more than you could sell them in the store, but they get to choose what they want and you might not even have it, one where you can answer questions about Flight Rising and get treasure in return, one where you can trade different items you may have for one big item, usually apparel, for your dragon to wear, and a last place where you can turn some of the things you keep in your hoard into goos, mucks, slimes, oozes, and something else, but I don't remember what, and then you can use those, as well as other materials to make more things.

Also!  If there are things you have in your hoard that you want to make sure you don't sell or throw away or give away, you can move them to your vault.  Which is fantastic.  You can even move gems and treasure into your vault.

How does business come into this?  Well, you have to know what to price your items for.  If you're making things to sell, you need to know what's in demand.  A great way to do that?  The forums.  Not all forums are about selling, in fact, there's one forum that's not even for anything Flight Rising related, it's just so people can have fun and talk about anything and everything.

The more I play Flight Rising, the more I realize I'm doing things like, making business transactions, marketing, sort of budgeting (not exactly) and I feel like if you homeschool (or even if you don't), Flight Rising would be a great place to go and sort of make your own business/market on there for selling this that or the other thing.  Maybe I'm way off, but that's just how it seemed to me.

~Katie

League of Legends

As was mentioned a post or two ago, I've started playing this game called League of Legends.  It's a team based game and is really very fun when you have people to play with.  My ex, Josh, got me into the game and introduced me to two of his friends...well, four, really, but only two that played regularly, that also played League.
When you first start League, they have you play a tutorial game that really confuses you, but if you have friends that are playing, they then take you into Bot/AI games and teach you whatever it was that you misunderstood from the tutorial.  You're given a set amount of RP (Riot Points) with which to buy skins or champs or other things of that ilk.  When you play games, you get something called IP (Influence Points), with which you can buy champs with...maybe runes, but I've never bought runes, so I wouldn't know.  Once you run out of RP, you're out...unless you buy some with real-life money...which I'm not planning on doing.
Every week you have...ten...(?) free champions that you can play, without having to buy and/or own them.  These champions are what you play in the game and each one of them has five skills.  A passive, which you can't control, and four skills that you control via the Q, W, E and R buttons on your keyboard.  The R is known as the 'ult', or 'ultimate' and you can level it up three times; at level 6, 11, and 16.  When in a match, your champion can level all the way up to 18 and you can level up your skills each time you level up, but only until each skill (other than R) has 5 points in it.
In a normal match, there are three lanes (top, middle/mid and bottom/bot) and a jungle.  In a bot match, you have two top, one mid, and two bot.  In a normal match (or a ranked match) you have one top, one mid, two bot, and a jungler.  The role of the jungler is to kill jungle monsters and gank lanes.  Ganking means that they come out of the jungle and essentially ambush the enemies that are being meanie heads to their teammate.  The top laner is typically a bruiser (which means they do damage) or a tank (which means they can take a lot of damage without dying, the midlaner is usually a mage, who scales off of ap (ability power), the botlaners are a support (a champion who keeps other champions from dying and helps to set up kills, while usually not doing any killing at all), and an adc (attack damage carry), who is supposed to do a lot of damage and get a lot of kills.

Below is a map of Summoner's Rift, which is the map that is most typically played on.

Then there's also the matter of items.  Throughout the match, you will generate gold and you will also earn gold from killing minions, which are little things that aren't champions and don't do much damage, but love to have at each other and do little bits of damage to you.  You earn gold from destroying turrets, which attack you if you go in without a minion wave( which is why you kill the enemy minions), which is generated after...I'm not sure how many seconds each, but the first minion wave spawns at 1:30.  With the gold that you get, you can buy items to increase your armor, health, mana (which, for most champions, lets you use your skills that are on the qwer thingy, though some champs don't have them.  It can be pronounce man-uh, or mah-nah...I've heard both.), ability power, attack damage, yatta yatta yatta...ask your skilled friends what to build on your champs, k?  K.

Most items have smaller items that can be built into them and if you can't buy the entire item when you first back/recall (return to base, by pressing the b button, which takes 8 seconds to load you back there and if you sustain any damage your recall is canceled and you have to stay and fight.  This also rejuvenates your health and mana), you can usually buy the little items that are built into it.

There are other game modes where you can play with three people...or six people...or have only one lane...or have only two lanes...it's a pretty in depth game, actually and I never realized how in depth before I started explaining it all....  I haven't even mentioned summoner spells or counter-jungling, or skins...wait, I mentioned skins, but I didn't explain them or anything.  There's a lot I didn't go into, actually.  There are a lot of champions to play and I own a grand total of...23...I think.

So, yes...this is my obsession, although I prefer to play with my friends.  There's also a game mode that is like the normal game mode that I mentioned, although it's called ranked.  For ranked, you play ten games and that's called your provisionals (I've played four so far) and then once you hit ten games, you can begin playing for something called LP (League Points...I think....) and once you hit 100, you get a rank.  There's bronze, silver, gold, diamond, platinum...I think....  And I think they're in that order, as well.  I am currently unranked.  But, in order to even play ranked games, you have to be summoner level 30 and you level that up by playing more games, be they bots, or pvp (player versus player).

Again, this is my obsession.  It is not the reason why I stay up until midnight every night...tonight it's not midnight yet and also, I blog and talk to people and stuff like that...sometimes I try to clean my room a bit....

To the people who hear about League all the time...I'm so sorry.

~Katie