Games

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Whew it’s been a long day.

Been trying to get stuff done on the website in between instant messages, I really wish we could pick up the pass but we’re kinda split between three countries and our associated jobs.

Had to conduct a tryout in SWAT4 today, first time I’ve actually done it in SWAT4. Usually I only get to observe but not conduct, this time though it was a situation where I got asked to take care of business. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done plenty of tryouts and been to a ton of them in both RvS and SWAT but it’s still a tryout.

I don’t really like conducting tryouts but I’ve done enough that I can get them running quickly and smoothly when not training others about the process. You’ve got to be able to judge the recruits performance, and I don’t really like to judge people. When it comes to doing tryouts, I am extremely strict, that is more or less how I was trained.

Some of my friends would say I’m just a right * proper bastard, suppose I am really lool. But when it comes to tryouts, even more so because I understand how important they are — and why we should be strict. I don’t have any problem with failing some one on their tryout, who said it was easy? But I’m also as fair as the Tryout SOPs allows me to be, things have to be done _correctly_ but honorably (y).

Although, to be perfectly honest I don’t think I’ve met any recruit that didn’t have it in them to pass a Troopers Tryout. If they didn’t, odds are they wouldn’t have been granted Recruit tags yet.

Heh, I remember my first clan back during my MechWarrior career. When I ended up with [SAS] down in Rvs, I was like “Huh? I’m getting trained and I’ve not been given a tryout yet?”. [SAS]‘s selection course I think is as close to the real thing in terms of being more like the military then the average group of gamers.

I’m really an easy going guy for the most part, but tryout conductor == iron fist-ed stickler for the tinest detail. When I conduct a tryout, you can generally be sure that who ever passes got a solid tryout or the ship went down trying!

The one thing I do like about conducting tryouts, is getting to debrief the recruit when they’ve passed. That’s the good part before the paper work and admin work pile up when they’ve passed haha.

Melon Popping through BF2

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Some recreation for the day hehe: found decent infantry only server of BF2 running my favorite city map. Rotated between weapons as I usually do when I’m not in a squad that is ‘serious’, eventually wound up as a Squad Leader going helmet popping with a Accuracy International.

I had a couple major runs, just found a nice covered spot and started sighting targets. After pushing the ammo counter to it’s limit I racked in a Veteran Sniper Combat badge +S. Normally I aim for centre of mass, some times the heart or lungs of a target specifically when sniping. But I usualyl go for a head shot when dealing with a threat, in BF2 I find them quite easy to manage on other snipers in particular.

It’s rare though that I usually stream though targets like that though, like 20 some rounds and almost as many kills later I’m still sniping lol. Given a good mark to shoot at, a secure firing position, I’ll usually be able to hit what ever I can see… Having to do that while every one and their dog is trying to shoot you, is a different story >_>

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Dropped off around 0630 last ngiht :

Spent msot of it hacking on the SOP Rewrites and chatting with friends. The room clearing section is quite difficult, it needs to be sufficantly normalized which is a sticky operation. Trying to balance between short and sweet with completeness makes managing its verbosity a tricky one to.

I also spent some time doing a little translation work. I quite like trying to translate small portions of text between English and German, because it gives me a chance to get a greater feel for the language. You’ve got to learn to think a different way when using another language, I generally try to be as accurate as I can but enjoy the ‘soft spots’ where the idea becomes clear but, trying to put express it in the other language is hard.

I would love some day, the opportunity to learn it in a lot more depth. I’m generally able to read well enough when I have a dictionary to help, but… Trying to express things well is a bit more challenging. It takes time and experience to learn a languages grammer. It’s not quite like learning a programming language… Given decent documentation I generally can pick up most common programming languages in an hour or two depending on it’s size, I especially love it when some kind of Backus–Naur Form (BNF) listing is available, makes learning a programming language much faster lol.

Conventional languages for people on the other hand, ain’t quite so simple :

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I’ve had a special briefing to give, a Rct to train with, two SNCOs to join int he shoot house for a few things, a ban/unban issue, yukes live op that almost launched, finishing [most of] my auditing and tending to a few site matters, and setting up a reminder should any thing remaining slip my mind.

I’m finishing my report and the last of my work for the day if I’ve gotta lock myself in a closet to do it >_>

Hopefully this time I won’t be working on it at 0500Q lol.

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The good news, I’ve got the first draft done on my report (yay!), the bad news is it is 0550Q and I’m less tired then I was at 1300Q loool. All that is less I guess is one or two more sections that I need to write.

One thing I really need to do is start organizing more of my common things into packages, I freaking love TeX :-).

Also good news is I’ve gotten auth for putting TeX Live PBI’s on their testing server so that means I can get cracking on field testing it here, then start trying to push it on to PBIDir.

With luck, tomorrow might be a SWAT4 Live Op so I’ll have time finish work on the site and get some more interesting work done too xD.

I was trained in Rvs, I took that route for the Selection Course and wouldn’t change that decision for any thing. But I do rather feel at home with SWAT4. I’ve been playing S4 since the beta and bought the game shortly after it came out. The thing I dislike about RvS is the door bugs, SWAT4.. Hey some suspects might draw faster then Jesse James but at least they eventually go down when you shoot them, can’t say the same for Raven Shields occasional super tangos dancing between bullets ^_^.

What pisses me off is I paid $50 for SWAT4, $30 for SWAT4:TSS and SWAT4:TSS although it is an expansion pack is implemented through the (very shitty compared to SWAT3s) mod system, which is probably the ONLY reason they ever released the SDK. Because the change in dev-teams meant a need for a quick way of hacking in the other 40% of the freaking game!

What a company…

task.done() ? rest : work;

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Not an overly busy day compared to the last few but the tiredness is catching up. Current plan of action is 5-10min to lay down and then start getting to work on things.

I need to finish evaluating things, start preparing my report, and get things done as necessary lol. I’ve also got a related appointment for this weekend so I’ve noted that my report should be considered due by Monday.

Managed to get in server for some SWAT4, *finally* game time this week. Only had time for two or three rounds though, got to move through on Point and First Cover positions. Been awhile since I’ve done any serious point work, much of my time as SSM/RSM had me in EL’s boots lol. Glad to see I’m still effective though, was able to keep a dynamic pace as Point with an MP5 and as First Cover with the M4A1 and still keep accuracy up.

Firing the M4A1 in SWAT4 when on the move is not very hard but takes practice to do it, gotta learn to control and manage the weapon. The recoil in the game is unrealistically appalling but it makes taking threats out as you move to your Point of Domination a little more challenging then in Rvs or using one of the SMGs.

It’s also nice to see how far one of our new Troopers have come, Big12… He’s come a long way since the first day he set foot in our server hehe.

It’s just the way I am I guess, work a bit, game a bit, work more. When I’ve got a big task list it tends to weigh on my mind to much to spend an entire day off totally lol.

Today also is my Fathers birthday, he was born in 1946 iirc so it would have been his 62nd.

Happy birthday Dad 😉

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Having dived down the rabbit hole an RSM and landed a Warrant Officer Class 1 in Wonderland, I know the red pill was the best choice.

I’m not really sorry to see the RSMs post go, it is really a lot less to worry about. I still have responsibilities but of a different nature, the one thing I really do like about the WO1 task set is the potentional jack of all trades nature it holds.

Some people don’t do things by halves, including me. I know many things but am master of few, yet I often study well beyond my skill sets own domain.

I’ve been transferring as many files as I think relivent over to our new RSM but I havn’t had time to formally report for my own orders yet. Now being the most healthy one here I’m stuck on the on call every 2 minutes at the drop of a pin instead of ht emore normal 5 minutes :-(. First time I’ve seen my mother throwing up in almost 20 years, whether she has a cold or not I know I’m only with allergies. Ended up with blood in the output of one of my allergy attacks today, not sure if that is a good sign or a bad sign but I know one thing — my sinuses feel a hell of a lot better !

With luck the down time won’t be to much… I’m usually like a butler around this house any way :. I’m not exactly the best person for the job imho but there is no other course of action. What would my family do if I didn’t act the way I do…. lol.

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I’ve had a lot of rolling about on [SAS] related business today, generally productive as far as the NCO and RSM matters go. I also posted a file with my ‘musings’ on a few tactical matters in an appropriate place. Not sure if it was a good idea to share my thoughts in this case but I’ve never really cared much about what others think of me, no point starting now 8=).

I’ve had some time to play with my little music management toy hehe. Basically the idea is to track filename changes in my music collection and then update my playlist files. It’s not meant to be pretty or optimal, just effective. If I ever get it finished I’ll probably leave it running on the file server so it can look after my music files. Every now and then I do like to rearrange files in ~/Music and it always breaks my playlists, and even when using Amarok for the excellent playlist editing… It kind of sucks to have to redo them manually through Amaroks collection browser, it’s a great system but my playlists can some times get quite large.

I’ve also managed to get my server and laptop set up to use NFS instead of SSHFS. Since it seems I can’t count on SSHFS, it has already incured a ‘price tag’. Samba’s mount_smbfs is to much bother on FreeBSD atm, the program that comes with the fusefs-smbnetfs port seems to be as good as KiA if you want to know any thing more about it beyond the sample config file and source code… That leaves NFS and AFS, not familiar very greatly with AFS but NFS a bit more so. The BSDs seem to do things a bit differently with the exports file then what I’ve encountered before, the fbsd handbook / obsd faq also leaves a little to be desired compared to some nice BNF notation ^_^. I might be able to do some thing with a SSH tunnel later, right now some thing that works is all that is important…

My allergies have been tremendous lately but it’s that time of year again. One thing I really did like about living in Fl. It was to damn hot for most of the stuff that makes me sneeze! It was kind of one of those places you are soaked to the bone just crossing the parking lot to get to the car lol.

Time to get some rest, tomorrows another day… Primary objectives for the near future are getting more work done on the SOP Rewrites and trying to fix my laptops problem with Linux GTK+ apps..grrr.

Tactical Wonderland

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An old friend appeared before me with a question before my new orders come, in each hand he held a pill. One Red, one Blue, each representing a course of action. Towards service or my own ends, my reply?

Loyal to the end

Musings of an RSM.

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Well, I expect I’ll probably get flamed over it but I’ve posted a WARNO in the SNCO forum.

I need to know exactly what is going on so I know just how much needs to be done. Perhaps my tone and style of writing is not the best for the situation, never has been one of my strong points for that matter. I think it serves the purpose well though, warno := helps me to order my thoughts and instructions in a manor for others to read and understand without a headache trying to figure them out.

The selection of a “warning order” I think was also appropriate, it’s advance warning of coming instructions and providing as much information and instruction as I can now. It’s also a point of fact that we need to get going hehe.

Once every thing is done, I want to grab the SSMs, sit down, discuss it and work on an OPORD (Operations Order), get with any Sgts who have more to say. Once that is done, type set the operations order and issue it. I figure it is probably the best way for me to handle the situation. I’ve mentally alotted about a week for start and a week for finish, after that.. If nothing comes in I guess it is RSM from hell time.

Because, whether I like it or not (and I don’t) I need to make sure things are running smoothly and push things in the proper direction as necessary… I want to make sure of where we are on the map before I push, to hard or softly… One thing I do want to do and Noer seems to be a step a head of me is a consistency to what we teach. I want as part of the OPORD or an attachment to it, a listing of every thing ‘big’ on that issue and boiled down to it’s simple form for routing through the SNCO and NCOs.

I could write that part in 5 minutes, have it type set in another 5, but I want to make sure nothing is missing from our current environment.

I am not going to sit and watch another generation of [SAS] Members face the same things mine had to during training… As the motto I would put on my sigblock if I could (bloody forum rules and all). Lead me, follow me, or get the fuck out of my way.

In this case I think we probably have a better group for getting the tasks we need done done, then we have since Randoms time as Cpl loool.