Month: March 2009

Writer’s Block: More Island Time

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You’re packing your bag for that other desert island—the one with no electricity—what 5 books do you take with you?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

If trillogies count as 3 books:

0. My copy of the Bible (it’s an NIV)
1. The Thrawn Trilogy: Dark Force Rising
2. The Thrawn Trilogy: Heir to the Empire
3. The Thrawn Trilogy: The Last Command
4. Lord of the Rings (it is one insanely huge book!) or Dune.

If trillogies count as 1 book:

0. My copy of the Bible (it’s an NIV)
1. The Thrawn Trilogy
2. Dune
3. Lord of the Rings
4. My old U.S. Army survival field manual

Wouldn’t be much of a list without a copy of the Bible on it, now would it? When I started in Fusion (one of two youth groups at the church), my pastor was polite enough to equip me with a copy free of charge. Haha, I still remember the first time I read it… friends had to teach me the whole chapter _and_ verse notation (yeah, that was an awkard moment lol). One day everyone in the group was asked to read a passage picked at random, I ended up in the book of Acts. Later on my D-Group had a week long pledge to read the bible every night, being me I of course had to inhale all of Genesis. I rarely get to read the bible these days, but it’s still a book I would take. The perfect chance to the entire thing cover to cover.

Timothy Zahns first tale about the imperial grand admerial Thrawn is one of my favorites, including the first appearance of my all time favorite Star Wars charactor: Mara Jade. I remember the first time I read it, I couldn’t help but wonder where Luke and Mara might end up in the future. The Hand of Thrawn duology solved that question lol (the skywalker curse aside, which she seems to be the only women to ever survive reasonably well). For some good reason, all the best Star Wars novels seem to come in trilogies and average at least 950pg or better xD. I’ve always loved Star Wars, especially the expanded universe. Largely gave up reading them after Vector Prime though, but If I had the cash; from things that I’ve heard more recently, I think I would pick up where I left off from and catch up with the years. Out of all the SW books I’ve read, the original Thrawn stories are my top fav, hence a must on the list 🙂

Dune, a movie I loved and a novel I really loved once I got to read it. Dune is just my kind of story, big, long, so much depth and imersion – like an RPG taken to an extreme. I also love Sci-Fi and stories that give one room to think a bit. Anyone who likes science fiction or fantasy must read Dune eventuall!!!!

I’m not a huge LoTR fan, but the Lord of the Rings is a very big, long, and in depth book – just right up my ally (like Dune). That reminds me, one of these days I need to puchase the remaining volumes and inhale them haha. J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert seem to have a great nack for creating their own little (eh, big) world, and finding a way to suck you into it…. you’ll either have to learn all the history of it, or be bored out of your mind before the end of the book (in which case, you probably wouldn’t like such books anyway)

Some years ago, well many now I guess lol. My brother picked up a few old field manuals from a military antique and surplus store. I have the manual to an M1 .30-06 rifle (the Grand), fm on booby trapping (where most of my minor-knowledge of explosives comes from), and Survival; which covers survival issues on land and sea, both tropical/desert and arctic environments (even for the avator that has fallen from the sky). After ~40 years, I’m sure it is woefully out of date or been replaced at least once or twice by the army, but hey… I wouldn’t dare plan a camping trip without it, let along being stuck on a desert island!

I love to read, although honestly these days any reading time I actually get to myself… usually ends up on something techy. There is just nothing like a good book…. born a couch potato, but books are better then watching the TV. Unlike television, where they have to pick and choose what to show you, a book lets you choose what you see. To explore that authors vision, and gaze upon it with your own eyes; dive into an eventure or visit a strange new world that only exists there in. Plus there is a lot more content then TV can offer lol.

And yes, Star Wars dominates my book shelfs better segments xD.

Writer’s Block: Desert Island Time

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You’re packing your bag for that magical desert island that happens to have electricity, a TV, and a DVD player—what five DVDs do you take with you?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

0. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
1. Spaceballs
2. ALIENS (think space marines and xenomorphs)
3. El Dorado (my favorite western)
4. A classic, maybe Now Voyager or something like Arsenic & Old Lace

Spaceballs though, would have to be on the list! Heh, I think I’ve seen that move so many times over the years that I could probably be the dork on set with the script, should they ever have to re-film it ^_^

Yet Another Way To Hang Your Web Browser

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Try copy/pasting ~4.5MB of data into a text area, then watch your CPU catch fire and the laptop overheat. If you have a decent browser or a cooling system, you might get as far as the form submission timing out ^_^,

Honestly, I could swear there is almost no complex software on this damn planet that does not f***ing suck!

Complex software that doesn’t suck: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, nvi, vim, GNU Screen, rxvt-unicode, GNU grep, nawk, ed, the better forms of emacs, gcc/g++, perl, fvwm2, but what else….. lol. There is more software that sucks then that doesn’t.

learning to use warnings, the hardway

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Trying to write to file names instead of file handles by way of typographical error, yes I am a super schmuck! Trying to figure out for at least 5 minutes why the parant isn’t getting any output from the child process, and sure enough…. Don’t print $filename when you mean print $filehandle, haha! (or better yet, don’t use ($lhs, $rhs) and ($lfd, $rfd) for the file names and handles when tired)

Tried running my scratch-file under use warnings, and sure enough the expected warnings poped up. This is what I get for not enabling warnings when writing a function in a separate file for testing crap. Hmm, what was it she said to me years back? Something like “We need to pump some caffeine into you”, maybe it’s not a bad idea lool.

Rule #1 of Perl, use warnings or die $!
Rule #2 of Perl, use strict or warn $!
Rule #3 of Perl, goto Rule #0

(use what or … is not actually perl syntax, let a long setting $!, and is infact a compiler error that would have to be trapped in an eval, but hey at this time of morning it works well enough in ascii :-P)

Writer’s Block: Taking It Personally

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Have you ever taken a personality test like the Myers-Briggs or Enneagram? If so, did you agree with the results? And what was your type?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

Once took something based on the Myers-Briggs style, can’t remember the type though. The result was fairly accurate, the only problem was it was also classified as being among like 2% of the population with that type lol.

I’ve always valued my uniqueness, hehe.

RvS action today

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Todays RvS live op was a success, and I should be able to start work on the maps for the S4 op during the week. Spent most of the day between practicing in TG#1, did the LO, then we set it to Adversarial mode for some force on force drilling.

Rule #1, always get Nick first, haha!

I don’t care a great deal for survival / team survival mode, and I’m not terribly skilled at bomb mode; but I do love pilot mode and a full set of elements. Why, is because it makes you think rather then just kill stuff. Private Airport and Import-Export were especialyl fun maps. Nice to see though that the young troopers paid some attention to their training after all. Heh, that reminds me of a funny. We were on Team Survvial mode, off the banking house. I came ’round looking for some tangos, when I see someone laying prone with an AR in front of a n openning. Since we’re all on the same TS, I call out, “Hey whoevers laying prone …here… look behind you!”. The funny part, Hunter eventually got twitchy enough to do it, maybe felt me staring at him lol. So he stand sup toa crouch and turns around……. I squeeze off a solvo of Mac 9/11+SD into his helmet, but die leaving him gimped after Hunter opened up with his AR.

That’s when I learned, shoot them in the leg before they turn around, or just shoot them in the head 6-12 times instead of 4 xD

I also got to enjoy peaks, sniper fest and I was in the thick of it with my Walther WA-2000 magnum going head hunting. The sniper rifle is not something I use often in RvS, because I ___h_a_t_e___ having to fire 2ce to kill 1 tango at close range with a gun, designed to have a lethal knock down punch from hundreds of metres away! In the fighting on Peaks, I used 3 rounds per kill just to be sure lol. I always open fire and keep shooting the targets until they go down… and sometimes tempted to put two in the head before moving on, just to make sure we don’t get a frag rolling out after the fact.

Me and TF also went on a rampage in the Penthouse, 3vs2 and won hehe. Penthouse was always my favorite adversial map. Before I got into [SAS] stuff seriously, I spent over a year in adversarial play learning the trade. When I went back to Co-Op style, I embraced a more slow and methodical approuch until reaching the [SAS] Selection Course. These days, I know when to be slow, when the be fast, and when to shake, rattle, and roll.

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Man I just had the strangest dream, dreamt that our webhost was trying to sell all our files on the black market, disguised as a fat woman. And then me and Wiz went down to collect the disks. What a ludicrous dream lol, like that scene from Good Fellas meets Big Mommas House :