I've got 3 more 'Great' throws to go before I complete my final throw research assignment.
I completed 'make 3 great throws' and 'make an excellent throw' assignments yesterday when I walked my dogs.

Currently, I've got a "make 20 great throws" one. It's definitely taking a while. Mostly my great throws are sheer random luck because I am usually walking to work and don't have time to stop and take my time aiming.

The gym persists! I'm assuming that someone in there lives in one of the houses next to it. I walked to it today but there was a raid going on so I attempted that (haha, good joke) to get one of my raid ticks.

Walking with my mantine now for some candies to boost him. After walking 72.5k with little Mighty, I have the candies to evolve my arcanine! Huzzah! Not Mighty though, but my higher CP guy that I got later I called Howitzer, and I keep thinking about calling him Howlitzer and I blame Coda for that.

I feel like I'm probably strange in that I seldom to never actually bother naming my Pokemon...

There were a ton of people gathered for a raid while I was walking around after work, but I couldn't ask to join because even just the thought made me feel sick, sk I just wandered to hit pokestops a bit, took down a 4th gym, and went home. Hatched a lot of my 2k eggs, although I should have been focusing on my 5k ones in case I was lucky and got a shiny mareep. Forgot about the community day until too late though.

I have no idea what's actually going on in the game. I just load and play.

I name some pokemon, but not all of them. The name usually has something to do with where I caught it, or it comes from a name that pokemon had in a previous game.

When I was younger, I used to name them all when I would play Pokemon games. Generally something lame like "Rocky" for geodude. Stuff like that. But it's just so tedious.

Yeah. I started naming my pokemon but I found i would get annoyed with the names after a while and couldn't always change them, so I just name the ones I feel like now, and only if a name seems to fit.

For instance, "Canuck" I caught on Canada day, "Queen" I caught at a rock concert, "Mighty" is a reference to a reference, and "Howitzer" has a longer explanation than I want to type.

My eevees have names though. Seems weird not to give them one.

Crap, I was looking forward to being done with the throwing research assignments after I reach 10 which I am 3 away from.
I as well get them with sheer luck and considering that most of the playtime I get is when I walk my dogs (which handicaps my aim because I'm not a thumb thrower) even those odds are below average.

To my memory, I've only once bestowed an uncreative nickname even if it was inspired.
It was the Pikachu starter in Yellow, my first game. I felt compelled to name it Zapper because my best friend's was Zappy.
She's the reason I wanted the game in the first place.

Admittedly, sometimes I am less creative than other times due to drawing blanks but I always try and with something satisfactory.

I do appreciate that you can dismiss/throw out the field research tasks that you know you'll struggle with. Unfortunately, the special tasks don't have that option. In addition to the 20 great throws (I think I'm at 16 at the moment), I need to catch a ditto, which I haven't caught one of in months.

The regular assignments can be dismissed? Great.
I can see the reason the special ones can't be, they're components of a story. The option there would have to be to dismiss the entire arc.

Fuck. I've never even SEEN a Ditto.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to see, but there's a little trashcan icon on the right side of the regular ones.

And you won't actually see a ditto. Not until you catch it. In the wild, they are disguised until caught.
I looked it up earlier and they are disguised as the following pokemon:

Gen 1: Pidgey, Ratatta, Zubat, or Ghastly
Gen 2: Yanma, Hoothoot, or Sentret
Gen 3: Zigzagoon, Taillow, Gulpin, or Whismur

So you basically have to catch a shit-ton of those for months on end until you finally get lucky.

Wow, that's unique and more realistic than encountering a Ditto in its real form. I kinda like it.

It is definitely a unique way to include them, although irritating when you really meed to find one.
XD

I nicknamed my Diglett "Holy Moly".

I can imagine that.

Randomly caught the only pidgey I've seen in a few days and it was a ditto!

I'm never gonna be battle ready. D:

I need to play more LOL

I've reached the third set of special research and it might be the end of the line for me at least for a while as two of the assignments are:
- Battle in 2 gyms
- Battle in 2 raids

As I've said I've got one gym that I can easily access. I've never hung around in any other area that has a gym and I don't get raids near me often.
I've got to get out there more.

EDIT:

Does Ninanic lurk around here?
There was a raid at my local gym today, just 22 minutes after I started walking my dogs.
So I made my usual Pokestop route and gave it a go. On the second attempt, I won! My newly evolved Pigeot (Windy) against the Snorknot raid boss.

Though I didn't have to win or even actually battle, it registered in my research log after I turned in my raid pass.

Unfortunately, a raid doesn't count as battling in a gym as I didn't get credit for that. :P

Finally booted from the gym today. Spent a good bit of time walking around and got two goals towards fancy research, and three towards regular research. I left one on hold to see if I can save them up and accept them over several days.

Now I have an "evolve 20 pokemon" goal which is mildly annoying as I just went on an evo spree a few days ago after putting it off for months. Blah.

Got into a raid though, with another person! Just showed up in the lobby while I was waiting. Got a sableye, and of course I tossed with "win a raid" goal. -.-

Ah man...I didn't finish my catch ghost type 20 ghost type special research before the Gen 1 festival ended and now ghost types are really rare/hard to find again.
XP

Apparently PoGo is not going to load on my phone anymore also. So that's fun. It jusy keeps timing out and saying that it can't retrieve my game data. And yes, I do have the app up to date.

I've had my share of issues opening the app.
I had to quit on my old phone, a Galaxy 4 because after a certain update it crashed during loading every time I opened it. I've got a used 7 Edge now.

I've still had times when it would be unable to process my login information or just freeze with a 'sign out' button popping up during loading.

I also had trouble getting into the raid I participated in yesterday afternoon. It kept freezing and telling me there was a network error but shutting off wifi seemed to solve that problem.

As for ghosts, Gastly has been a relatively common encounter in my area but they're hard as hell to get into a Pokeball so I've sworn them off and intend to just do the buddy system with my Haunter.

Immediately after posting that, it logged me on, no problem.
I pretty much never have my WiFi turned on just because there are almost never any available WiFi connections unless I'm at work.
For raids, mine occasionally is glitchy like that, but it's not very often.

I almost never have wifi turned on either but had to turn it on not long ago to update Chrome.

Yeah, that makes sense. All those darn updates anyway...

My gym had another raid today.
Thank god you don't have to win for it to count in the research log because this boss, a Jinx was too difficult. Couldn't even dent the damn thing and it dropped my Pokemon like flies with fucking draining kiss.

So now I completed my two raids and just need two regular gym battles to finish this stage of the story research.

My app will work just fine on my house wifi but often not on public ones. I just assumed that whatever network I'm on has some download limit on how much I can use and PoGo runs over it. Once I switch to my data, it's fine.

No Pokemoning today though. I had to update the app while I was away from home, so I had to wait until I got home again and passed all the gyms!

Also, anyonen else find it a little annoying that the researches only refresh at stops and not at gyms? By fluke, the gym is closer to my brother's place than the stops are.

Got my stamp for today though. You can hold out on accepting completed quests until the next day for more stamps. :)

Aaaand now it won't let me on again.

It doesn't really bother me that much. Probably because you can only have 3 at a time anyway and pokestops are more frequent than gyms here. Of course, I have to walk almost 4 miles, round trip, 3-5 days per week to get to my one job, sooo....less of an issue for me than it probably is for a lot of people.

Maintenance ate my post and now I'm miffed and don't to type it out again.

Short version.
= Walking to stops is hard sometimes. No walkable stops from here. Few stops in town. Sucks. No pokemon at all at house. Might try incense for rare-ish pokemon trick. The end.

Personally, Stops are more accessible and more plentiful for me than Gyms.

Apart from the one a two-minute walk from my house and the one I was able to finish the 'battle in 2 raids' assignment for the story at, I've never actually spent time at a gym location. I've only been able to use their Pokestop functions in passing.

The aforementioned is also the only gym in my neighborhood. Whereas I've got three stops walking to my local grocery store and two at local walkable parks (one of them is also one of the three grocery store stops).
And that's just to my knowledge.

Success with the incense experiment, of sorts. Got a mankey, a more-aggressive-than-normal weedle, and a breloom. I don't even know what that last one is.

Of course, this does present the issue of me not being able to get any more pokeballs until I head into the nearer side of town and hit a few stops.

Are rare candies still a thing? Didn't get any my last raid. Thought that was where they came from.

Raids do give Rare Candies, I received one from the raid I won the other day.

Yeah, raids do give rare candies, but it's not a guaranteed item.

Most raid exclusive items are exceedingly rare from what I've gathered.

Just a heads up, if you have a magikarp, put it as your buddy NOW. When you eventually hit stage 6 of the special research, one of the tasks is to evolve a magikarp (and already evolving one before you get to it doesn't count).

Thanx for that.
I'm still on stage 3 and the Magikarp I have is relatively new so I need all the time I can get.

One of the stage 6 tasks is also to be at trainer level 25, so you'll have plenty of time. Figured I should give a heads up though.

Also good to know.
I am not too far off, I'm at level 19, almost level 20.

This afternoon I caught my first Ditto disguised as a Ratatta and got my first research breakthrough package which included a Moltres encounter! It was difficult to catch but I managed with a Pokeball.

Yep, my first one was also Moltres.

I feel I'm not making a lot of progress...

Level 25 but my magikarp has a ways to go.

Got Howitzer in a gym today. Took out the ailing Mystic group that was there. I think one even dropped in the time it took me to walk from my car and across the street. Still plugging away at the 'evolve 20 pokemon' research task.