What on Earth is Red Reading This Time: The Lost Family

What if something potentially fun and lighthearted, or just a personal curiosity, takes a sharp turn off the highway and deposits you in the middle of nowhere, adrift without any cell signal nearby?

This isn't the plot of a novel, but metaphorically speaking this is what happened to Alice Collins Plebuch when her work on her family tree took a decidedly unexpected direction. All she had to do was spit into a vial and send it off to a DNA testing site, such as 23andMe or AncestryDNA, and await the results. What she got back, however, wasn't the Irish ancestry she expected. Alice experienced what genealogists call a NPE, a Non-Paternity Event, where your parent isn't the one you thought they were. Sometimes it's an adoption that was hushed up, it's the usage of donor sperm for insemination, or the byproduct of an affair. Or sometimes the NPE was something darker. The result of experiencing an NPE, however is that it can turn the recipient into what is known as a "Seeker", trying to find out the answers behind the NPE no matter where the path leads.

Uh, yeah. Basil Rathbone I ain't.
From Pinterest.

This story, and a study into the practice of what can be classified as recreational genomics, is the focus of The Lost Family by Libby Copeland. The book evolved from what was originally an article for the Washington Post*, and Libby interwove Alice's search with an investigation into how genomics has evolved in the past decade to where it is today, including both the positive and negative aspects of this opening frontier into what our genes say about us. 

I'm surprised the photo turned
out as good as it did. It's a wee
bit cloudy outside today.

Sometimes the positive and negative are part of the same story, such as the usage of DNA genealogy databases in the apprehension of the long elusive Golden State Killer. That Joseph James DeAngelo was caught was one thing, but that DNA genealogy databases could be exploited by law enforcement without people's knowledge was quite another.

Remember those fingerprints we all provided 
when we were kids back in the 70s and 80s
so that law enforcement could find us if we
were abducted? Yeah, like that only much more so.
From imgflip.

But this book, while it makes for an engaging read**, has a personal angle to it that goes far afield from anything that this blog typically covers. 

***

Over the past decade I've seriously considered having my DNA tested numerous times, and even within the past month I've gotten to within a few clicks of signing up for AncestryDNA's DNA test. (Luckily for me I didn't, because a couple of days later that money --and some Father's Day cash-- was sucked up by car repairs. Yay, car repairs.) Some of it is curiosity, as I've always considered myself a bit of a mutt as far as my ancestry is concerned, and my mother insisted we have some Native American ancestors on her side***, and putting the question of where my ancestors came from to bed would solve these two items. But there's there's more to it than just that. 

We know absolutely nothing about my father's father.

("Oh, a puzzle!" my questing buddy exclaimed when I mentioned this to her.)

My dad was always told that his mom and dad met, moved out to Colorado, got married, and his dad died when he was an infant. As you might be able to read between the lines, that was simply a fabrication by my grandmother and my great-aunt, her sister. One of my dad's cousins finally spilled the beans to him about 25 years ago before my grandmother passed away: apparently my grandmother got pregnant, she and my great-aunt went out west, had my dad, and then came back home with him. My dad, being the sort who would apologize if he ever cursed with a word stronger than "darn it", was incensed and demanded an explanation from his mom. 

"Who told you that?!" she responded.

"I want to know the truth!"

I don't know all the details, but what I do know is that in addition to the above story my grandmother had "doctored" my dad's birth certificate, which made it difficult for him to receive Social Security benefits because his name didn't match that on the certificate.****

So... Who was my grandfather? Outside of a name that may or may not be real, I don't have a clue.

I also don't know if there are any genetic risks for cancer or heart disease or whatnot that I don't know about either.

As for relatives I don't know about, well... I'm of two minds on that one. Unlike my wife, who calls her parents multiple times a week and chats with her sister and her other relatives on social media all the time, I tend to keep my distance from my family. They all tend to be far more religious than I am, and far more prudish as well, so I'm happy to keep them at greater than arm's length. 

And, oh look, here's this little DNA test that has the ability to upend entire families' understanding of who they are if I were to spit into a vial and send it off to get studied.

That's the thing that keeps me from pulling the trigger: I already know that something will likely come up, and that I won't be interested in reaching out to these people, but will those people then find me? Or if I don't get test but another relative does, and suddenly I'm the one getting the metaphorical knock on the door by someone claiming to be a cousin I never knew existed? 

In a post pandemic world, where I saw the worst of humanity broadcast for everyone to see, do I really want to know these people? I can select my friends, but I can't do the same to family. Unlike many Seekers I don't feel adrift because I'm missing part of my life, but I am curious. But am I curious enough to find out answers I might not like? 

***

Finally, there's a question about my genealogy that has nothing whatsoever to do with my non-existent grandfather, and that has to do with my family's search into their own family tree. 

One of my mom's sisters has been conducting research into my mom's family, and supposedly she's found all of this interesting stuff about where the family came from, yadda yadda yadda. However, my aunt isn't exactly known for her academic rigor, so without me reviewing her research I look at her claims with a skeptical eye. So for my edification if nothing else, I'm interested enough into my own verification of these claims that I've begun collecting a database on the family history. Yes, I use Ancestry's database, but no, it's not public. DNA testing might help to solidify some of this genealogical research, but then again, it might open up a can of worms. 

Jeez, Rowan, the least you could have
done is gotten me into the Opening
Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics...
From memegenerator.net.

***

Some reviewers think of this usage of recreational genomics --and the book itself-- as basically First World Problems. "I don't think that the world really cares who your great grandpa bonked," is what one reviewer on Goodreads said. The world may not, but this isn't really about what the world thinks. The book isn't really written for Genealogists either, as they likely already know everything in the book and would look at it as rather simplistic.

From Cafepress, where you can get this
on a coffee mug.

I don't get to say how your ethics and morality play into what you might find in your family tree, and to be fair what people think of genealogy in the US and Canada --where a lot of people's ancestors came from somewhere else-- is going to be different than the viewpoint of someone from Europe or Asia. 

If I were to look at it as purely an academic exercise, I'd most likely pass on a DNA test. From that perspective, the potential downsides outnumber any upsides. Still, I'd be a fool to not acknowledge an emotional component to this: the desire to know as much as possible. While I may keep my family at a distance, knowing a bit about their collective history --my history-- is a very strong pull. Plus, I want to set any records straight: I'd be going in ready to accept things such as hidden names or even different family names than what is commonly accepted today, because history is messy like that.

What? Oh, the book! Right.

About the book...

Yes, I liked it. For people worried about there being too much Biology in the book, don't worry; if you lack detailed knowledge about genetics you won't have any issues following the book. You had better expect to think critically about the subject, however, and for people who thought that getting your DNA tested on a lark or as a present to a family member the book is a bucket of cold water dumped on you. If you want to go ahead, do so, but go into it with your eyes wide open as to any consequences you might encounter. And to be fair, you don't even need to have been tested to personally feel the effects; Big Data is seeing to that.

*In much the same way as Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer was originally written as an article for Outside Magazine. Alas that the original article appears to go to a follow-up article about people who are obsessed with Chris McCandless.

**Not everything in the book is as annotated as some people might like, but I was comfortable with it given that NPEs and other genealogical surprises are kind of a touchy subject, and genealogists weren't always so keen to put their names and faces down on these discussions.

***Which I no longer believe, I might add. Apparently, that is a fairly common family backstory that people have, and it frequently turns out to not be the case.

****It took months, but eventually things got sorted out.

EtA: Changed a couple of words for clarity's sake.

Meme Monday: Reading Memes

Given that a lot of people I know who are into RPGs and MMOs are also readers, it kind of figured that this version of Meme Monday was going to make an appearance.

But if you're like me, you can relate
to this one. A LOT.
From someecards.

I'm with Stephen Colbert on this one.
From Pinterest.

From Debbie Tung and
wheresmybubble.tumblr.com,
quoting Stephen King.

And alas, this is me as well.
This happened last night, hence
that first meme. From memegenerator.

You Know You've Been Writing for a Long Time When...

...you spend hours editing a document that should have been properly reviewed by someone else.

Yes, this was a document for work, and there were work things attached to this document that I'm not at liberty to discuss. However, a cursory glance of the doc told me that it needed help.

A LOT OF HELP.

And I've been spending hours on this thing, and I'm close to halfway done, just trying to deconstruct what the author was aiming for and how to fix it. 

The funny thing is, I'm not mad at the author for the state of the document.* Who I am grumpy at, however, are the people who reviewed it before me who said "Yep, looks good!" and passed it on.

Who knew that all these years of writing ol' Parallel Context would come in handy like this?

*Again, for reasons I can't discuss.

Meme Monday: Vacation Memes

Okay, I don't take vacations very often.

The reasons for my lack of interest in travelling places are pretty diverse, but the single biggest reason for a long time was that we couldn't afford to go on vacation somewhere. A couple of times we camped via car camping to save money, but the sweltering Midwestern heat did us no favors with the "great outdoors". 

I suppose we could go on vacation now, but I'm at that stage of my career where going on vacation is actually more trouble than it's worth. I have to get ahead of the pile of crap that is in my to do list just so I can leave and not be pestered by somebody --and yes, that has happened several times before*-- and then when I come back there's three times the amount of work waiting for me to deal with than if I'd just stuck around.

You tell 'em, Ron.
From Parks and Recreation,
via Pinterest.

There's also the issue of me working around off days from getting kids back and forth from college, and now all of my little extra doctors' visits, so I've just kind of looked at what vacation days I have and take a day or two off here and there. 

I do look at those people who could simply take a week or two off on release of a game they've been waiting for --or an expansion-- and wonder how they could pull that off. I mean, there were so many people who were going to go balls to the wall** when TBC Classic and then Wrath Classic were released, and now Diablo 4 has generated the same interest:

And oh look, there's a Zelda thread about pretty
much the same thing. From Reddit.

Still, that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate a good vacation meme, so here's a few to tickle your funny bone...

The few times we have gone on vacation,
this has been my wife, wanting us to make
sure we get to the place on time.
From Pinterest.

But this... This is me.
From Someecards.

Alas, this is me as well. After
over 20 years of working from 
home, I have issues not thinking
about work. From quickmeme.

And then it's all over.
"It must have been love, but it's over nowwww...."
From Memegenerator.

*And this was done by people who should have known better. They thought that my being "on vacation" meant I just wasn't visible on the company's Microsoft Teams. When they asked me to get on the network to look up something on a server, they were genuinely shocked when I told them I was 3 hours away from my laptop and was going to take this discussion up with their boss when I got back.

**Yes, it's more than just the title of a song by Accept.

Friday Night... Repairs

I think I jinxed my questing buddy.

She logged in to raid last night and... Wrath Classic barfed and wouldn't let her in. Multiple times.

So after a lot of debugging by disabling addons and other tips that the raid lead was providing --and weren't working-- she decided to take drastic measures and uninstall/reinstall Wrath Classic.

While she was waiting, I kept her spirits up with some pics inspired by what was going on in LFG Chat in our Classic Era cluster.

I found this on Redbubble:

My oldest wants this.
Because Night Elf Hunters, you know.

And then, because I was curious, I found a companion to that one:

I'm not so sure I'd want to, uh,
advertise about that fact.
Again, from Redbubble.

Right about then, I stumbled onto a pic from Reddit that Sam Hogg had created as a commission, and I about fell over:

!!!!
This is the Artstation version.

"OMG I FOUND CARD!!!" I practically shouted in Discord.

I have no idea who the hell the Draenei is, but that is Cardwyn to a tee. Well, outside of the fact that she would more likely not be in her robes, but still...

Whomever got that as a birthday present got something priceless.

***

Shortly after that, my questing buddy finished with the Wrath Classic installation, but still she couldn't login. So I took the data she could give me --her laptop's basic info (processor, memory, etc.) and the error code-- and did some quick research. Luckily for me, I'd been wrestling with this exact problem on my son's old laptop before it gave up the ghost, so I knew where to look for the legacy AMD FX Series drivers. I found the one for her laptop, gave her the link, and waited.

And hoped.

...and it worked.

She was able to get in finally, and it turned out the raid waited for her while they filled out the rest of the slots. But since she'd uninstalled/reinstalled the game, all of her addons were gone. So... she had to reinstall and reconfigure all of those too.

But the worst part of the fight was over. She was back online.

Now the raid under the Friday Night Lights can go on.

In the meantime I'm going to admire that artwork some more while fishing. And listen to Todd Rundgren:

EtA: Corrected a grammar problem.

It All Blurs Together

There are times when "I hit it with my axe!" is the best way forward.

--Me (probably)

"I hit it with my axe! Wooo!!"

--Youngest mini-Red, in our 2-3x annual 1e AD&D game, as she in turn high fived one of our fellow party members. Yes, both women play Dwarven Fighters. Are you surprised?

If you listen to people talk about Retail WoW after having been away for a while* you can get absolutely lost in all of the systems and designs in the modern game. 

You don't say....

Returning to Classic WoW as a refuge from the complexity is an illusion, as those devoted to the min/max culture brought that back with them to Classic where it has morphed into its own culture in the Wrath Classic servers.**

Every time I think about trying out Retail, I read some blog posts or watch a YouTube video and --story complaints notwithstanding-- I get lost when people start talking about the various systems in game. When I also realize that unless I want to pay Blizzard extra money I'd have to go through Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands to get to Dragonflight, I just kind of shudder at all of the complexity those two expacs introduced. 

If you've been playing the game straight through, that's one thing. After all, the systems and whatnot are gradually added over time. It's when you go away for years and then come back do you realize just how crazy things have gotten. 

***

There was a time when I was the one who preferred the complex over the "easy to learn and hard to master" method of game design. Back in the early 90s, when I was knee deep in games such as Squad Leader, War and Peace, and Battle of the Bulge, an old high school acquaintance invited me to playtest a boardgame he and some mutual acquaintances were working on. 

This was the sort of thing that I played
back then, which is Victory Games' Ambush!, 
a solitaire WW2 wargame.
From Jonathan Arnold of Board Game Geek.

Their game was set in the Star Trek universe, where up to three players were fighting over control of a specific doohickey using several starships each. The three factions --Federation, Klingons, and Romulans***-- were pretty much equal in overall strength and movement.

"Is this like Star Fleet Battles?" I asked.

"No," my friend replied. "That's too complex. We're aiming more for Axis and Allies."

Okay, I thought. Let's give it a try.

The game had potential, but I felt that they lost something with the rules as simple as they were. "The various ships with their number rating is fine," I began, "but have you thought about two numbers, one for attack and one for defense? That'll allow you to have more and different types of starships out there."

"We're not doing any of that Avalon Hill bullshit," one of the team snapped back at me. "That crap is too hard and we want this to get a wide audience."

After that, I realized that they weren't really planning on taking my advice to heart, so I just kept it basic with some generally positive feedback and then found an excuse to leave rather early. 

The irony is that not only am I the one who prefers simple systems to more complex ones these days, the so-called "simple systems" found in WoW's Classic Era are far more complex than what I proposed back then. Computers have a habit of condensing complexity to manageable levels, after all.

***

Kirk: Galloping about the cosmos is a game for the young, Doctor.
Uhura: Now what is THAT supposed to mean?

--From Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

That's not to say that complexity is bad by any means. If you know going in how complex things are, and if said complexity is presented well, the complexity isn't necessarily a problem. The thing is, if complexity is gradually added to over the course of years, you may not realize just how complex things had gotten until said complexity becomes overwhelming.

Or in my case, poking my nose into World of Warcraft after a decade away.

I like to use the Blood Elf starting areas up to and including The Ghostlands as a great way to introduce someone into the various systems of WoW --well, TBC-era WoW-- in a gradual fashion. The build up includes things such as timed events, escort quests, mobs with AoE damage, mobs that chain pull, and mobs that drop the "don't stand in the bad" stuff. In the end, you even have opportunities for grouping up for the two abomination elites as well as Dar'Khan Drathir, but along with everything else that got nerfed in Cataclysm those grouping opportunities were obliterated as well.**** That basic introduction carried my original toons all the way up to max level in original Wrath of the Lich King, because that foundation was utilized and built upon from the beginning. 

From what I've read, the brand new intro zone provided in Shadowlands (Exile's Reach) does a great job of providing a new player a way of learning the basics of WoW, but what ends up happening is that those basics get thrown out the window once you reach high enough level to hit the various expansions.

Not that people can't utilize the basics of "don't stand in the bad", but that you're not exposed to the systems found in the expacs until you reach those expacs.

Like, oh, say, Legion.

Or Shadowlands.

Or even Dragonflight.

Existing players may not notice it at all, or may even think it a new quirk of the current expansion, but players who had been away for years --or are new-- will notice. That wasn't always the case, as the systems found in TBC Classic and Wrath Classic --flying and membership in Scryers/Aldor being the notable exceptions-- are also found in Vanilla Classic.***** 

After a while, all that bait-and-switch complexity just blurs together and makes you feel like an idiot for not understanding it all. If that doesn't happen on its own, the loudmouth toxic aspects of the WoW community certainly will do that for you.

"LOL L2P noob!"
From Memebase via Pinterest.

***

The thing is, sometimes all you want to do is hit an enemy with your axe. Which brings me to Diablo 4.

I'm moderately interested in Diablo 4, but to my mind as someone who never played the Diablo franchise I'd first want to play Diablo 2# and then 3 before finally setting my foot into Diablo 4. 

If that sounds vaguely familiar to long time readers of the blog, that's the process I used to approach Retail WoW with, starting in Cataclysm. I'd select a toon or two and then level those new toon(s) from L1 all the way to max level when the new expansion dropped. This meant that the crowd had already cleared to max level, begun their raiding, and were sitting in Trade Chat complaining that they were bored before I even killed my first mob in the new areas. It also gave me a chance to experience the game as it was presented, whether that presentation was purposely intended or not.

In the case of Diablo, I'm not one to replay RPGs ad nauseum --because replaying and releveling to the end at increased difficulty levels doesn't engage me-- so if I wanted to try those games out I'd wait for a massive sale## and then purchase those games at the price that reflects the worth of a single playthrough rather than a steady stream of replays for.... whatever reason. 

(I suspect that the "replay" concept of Diablo arose because people would replay the game while they waited for Diablo 3 and then Diablo 4 to be announced and released. Now, it's just... part of how the game is played.)

Nevertheless, when I watch Diablo 4 YouTube videos, what I'm struck by are how much Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft have blurred together, terminology wise. People talking about Affixes, grinding for Renown, and the various Seasons could be talking about either game, really. Add in World Bosses and dungeon grinding, and you'd have a hard time distinguishing discussions between the two games if you weren't looking at the screen.

That does highlight something that I never thought I'd ever have to contend with in an Action RPG such as Diablo: just how much complexity from WoW has bled over into Diablo? I mean, "I hit it with my axe" is pretty much the hallmark of the Diablo playstyle, but if you have to pay attention to all of this other crap just to play the game to completion, what's the point? What else is out there, that if you missed a specific item you were doomed to not playing the game right and that you had to start over? 

We've all experienced this feeling before,
which makes you wonder why you spent
all this time in the first place.
From Gamerant.

Kind of like that ol' Diamond Flask for Warriors in WoW Classic. If you didn't know that was a BiS item for Warriors in Classic/Classic Era, and you missed out on selecting it as the reward from the Voodoo Feathers quest, then you were simply shit outta luck.

L2P noob indeed.

***

In the end, complexity is an aftereffect of how long a game has been in existence. All games will, over time, become more and more complex as additions are made to the base game. Hell, just look at all the additions to the various incarnations of Sid Meier's Civilization over the years. The thing is, just how the game implements that complexity and builds up to that complexity is critically important. 

And that is something that Blizzard's properties need to work more extensively on.

*Such as, oh, 9 years from the date of this post but effectively 12 years.

**You can just opt out of this culture, as I kind of have, but that only goes so far. Even I partake in the min/max-ing culture whenever I fire up sixtyupgrades.com to see if a specific piece of gear is an upgrade or not. Still, Classic Era has been a true refuge from the meta driven culture found in Wrath Classic.

***They were most definitely old school in that they hated Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was the only one who regularly watched ST:TNG, and even then I stopped watching by my Junior year of college.

****I'm pretty sure I soloed Dar'Khan during the Cataclysm expansion on a Horde toon at level, and maybe even soloed the abominations as well.

*****I want to point out that membership in Aldor or Scryers was entirely optional in TBC. You'd think it was required, but I managed to simply ignore it on Deuce while leveling her and never had any issues with that. Of course, I wasn't going to raid, so that meant I wasn't gaining access to any Scryer or Aldor specific crafting recipes, but since I could just buy those if I needed them it wasn't a big deal per se. Flying in TBC wasn't mandatory if you weren't planning on raiding or accessing the Tempest Keep 5-person dungeons, as my old TBC Classic main --Briganaa-- didn't gain access to flying until some days after hitting max level and I absolutely was required to enter into those Tempest Keep instances for attunements. But Deuce, like before, skipped flying entirely until she finally had to bite the bullet and get it at L80 in Northrend. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that Neve still doesn't have flying in Wrath Classic, and she's been at L80 for a long time now. It's... just not a priority for me in the same way that I don't have a single toon in the entirety of Wrath Classic that has epic flying. Somewhere I can hear the collective mass of Wrath players screaming at the audacity to simply not give a fuck about flying anywhere fast.

#I mean, good luck trying to get Diablo 1 to work, if you can find a (legal) copy at all.

##Oh, the irony. I wrote this over the weekend, and between then and now the Blizzard Summer Sale appeared, with D2: Resurrected at 67% off and the entire D3 franchise at 26% off. To be honest, I wasn't expecting this sale right now --more like in November/December-- and my budget is kind of shot to hell with car repairs and my oldest getting her wisdom teeth yanked, so I'll likely pass on D2.

So Here's a Toast

 As I've alluded to over the past few months, my questing buddy has continued to raid in Wrath Classic by joining a Friday night semi-pug put on by a mutual friend of ours. I call it a "semi-pug" because it has a regular group of about 10-15 people and they pug the rest of the spots. Initially the pug was for a full size 25 person raid, but after enough failed raids due to puggers simply not having the gear or the basic skills needed to understand things like "don't stand in fire", the raid lead dropped the pug down to a 10 person raid so that the regulars could get the gear they need to once again ramp up to a 25 person raid.

So... For the past month, that 10 person raid has pretty much worked according to plan. The raid has been getting clears of Ulduar, which my questing buddy was thinking she wasn't going to see at all given how the 25 person raids had been going. That doesn't mean they've gotten to Algalon, because they've not met the requirements for that*, but they have been downing Yogg-Saron regularly now.

I've been proud of her given that she's new to healing for this expac, and I know from experience that she's gotten really good at it. Part of this is that she attacks the game like a puzzle to be solved, figuring out how to get the BiS gear she needs, and picking the brains of people she knows and respects who are better at healing than her.**

That she does this with three kids --and their associated demands on her time-- is even more impressive.

(And have I mentioned that she puts up with my quirks and foibles? I'd not blame her if she threw up her hands and declared "You're impossible!!" but she just keeps hanging in there.)

The two of us back in early January,
when we were clowning around
in Shattrath before raid time.

So on the eve of the Trial of the Crusader raid, here's to my questing buddy and her success!

*Whatever those requirements are. No, I'm not going to look it up, because when our 10 person raid team broke up I simply stopped caring at that point. Okay, that's not entirely true, because I didn't care all that much to begin with in Wrath Classic, as I was determined to not do what I did in TBC Classic and go all hardcore about it. For me, that meant only giving just as much of a damn about raiding as would pass the minimum requirements to actually get into the raid. (I think I can hear my questing buddy screaming, because for her part of the love of the game is all the plotting for gear.) I know enough about the cadence of raiding that it typically takes a few tries to get the positioning and whatnot correct, and unless you're hardcore enough to get into the PTR to practice, those first attempts "to work out the kinks" will be on live servers.

**This does spill over into Classic Era, too, as she'll frequently drag me along when I'd be more inclined to simply just screw around and fish or something in game. That's how we discovered we could two person significant portions of Gnomeregan as Hunter and Mage at level, and the same with Scarlet Monastery: Library and Uldaman.