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An old hobby of mine, designing military hardware and organizing units. Maybe
its one of the reasons I got into the CBT (Classic BattleTech) side of things in
my MechWarrior career and love RTS (Real Time Strategy) games.

Any ways what I’ve been pondering over to night.

A simple ‘Element’ being the lowest level of the fighting force. Consisting of
ether 8 Infantry, 4 Land Vehicles, 2 Air/Sea/Space Craft under 500 Tons, or one
ship over 500 tons.

Two classes of infantry, soft armored and battle armored. Soft armored would be
more or less what we have to day. Using soft-body armor or hardened ceramic
armors (think Marines from ALIENS) and standard weapons. While battle armored
infantry would be fitted with a suit of armor. Figure avg trooper becomes
about 2 meters tall with a 3 meter jump height using the heating/cooling
management systems to assist the trooper. Armed with 6.2mm Rifles and 10mm
Pistols. And enough hard armor to shrug off a few standard rounds.

I remember reading that a round has to be > 22Cal but < 30Cal to really be
effective so I think a 6.2x48mm rifle round would be an interesting experiment.
As a trade off between 9mm and .45Cal pistols 10mm is also interesting in
concept. Instead of normal ammo the rifles would fire a special round. A 6.2mm
armor piecing round thats designed to explode when hitting hard objects. Like
walls or cars. Yet made to fragment instead of go kaboom when hitting soft
targets like people. If you figure the blast could have enough force to take
most of an arm off. Its much more humane to just kill the sap not blow them up.
And to have the balence that the micro HE stock is good reason for the enemy
to rethink how they armor their own troops while improving joe rifle mans
ability to hurt armored fighting vehicles 🙂

I think being centered around the idea of a Combined Arms Operations Company is
the best plan.

4 x Mechs, 1 Support unit, 1 Command unit, 2 Assaulter’s.
3 x Main Battle Tank
1 x Command/Control/Communications/Intelligence vehicle which can tow a pair of
field guns for use as part of an artillery unit.
1 x Self-propelled missile artillery or Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV).
8 x Infantry in battle armor or gun crews.
2 x Close Air Support units.

My ideal configuration would be. 8 Battle suited infantry supported by a
tracked or hover-craft driven IFV /w 4-tube Anti-Tank missile launcher & 45mm
Autocannon. Toss on a pair of 12.7mm Anti-Near-Anything fifty cals on the top
for balance.

3 Main Battle Tanks maybe 45-75 Tons each. 135-142mm rifled cannon with 40-60
shells. 3 12.7mm MG, two top mounted + one coax with about 1600 Rounds. A pair
of triple tube smoke discharges on the front of the turret plus a pair of
single shot recoilless anti-tank rocket tubes on the sides of it.

Yes I’m kind of a nut about packing in as many weapons as possible followed by
as much armor as she’ll hold without losing the desired level of agility/speed.
🙂 Hehehe

Two CAS units consisting of STOL (Short Take Off & Landing) capable strike
fighters powered with dual-engines. A pair of 25mm Vulcan cannons, pair of wing
tip mounted Air-To-Air medium range missiles al cine to real world AMRAAMs.
4 Internal bays for deploying two 3-tube micro-missile stations and two
stations holding two smart bombs or 3 air-to-ground missiles. (HRTSG-ATG) 2
Under wing stations (per wing) for 2x bombs or 3 x air-to-air /or air-to-ground
missiles + 1 more under wing stations (per wing) for an Air-To-Air missile. All
of these under wing stuff being at the cost of stealth that is. More or less a
pair of harrier jump jets on steroids !

Or even a pair of helicopters packing a 17mm chin gun slaved to the gunners
head. Dual 12.7mm electronically fired forward mounted machine guns for the
pilots use. Wing tip mounted 5-Tube rocket pods and two stations for 4x
Missiles on each stub wing. Where thers a mixture of TV guided wire controlled
fine stabilized anti-armor missiles and Hybrid Radar / Thermal Semi-self
Guiding Air-To-Ground (HRTSG-ATG) missiles. Now thats a painful combo hehe.

A ‘Mech element with a support unit with long range missiles, heavy cannon, or
long range weapons like a super long range sniper rifle/laser. Two general
battle configured ‘Mechs of the line, CQB Configurations, or Spec Ops Raiders.
Plus a Commanders ‘Mech.

Wheeled or Hovercraft based truck with AA ability to provide a mobile
command/control post with lots of communications and intelligence gathering
tools. Plus it could tow a few cannon for arty units.

8 Infantry in battle armor or a gun crew.

A Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) like self-propelled missile artillery
unit for close’ish arty support on the go.

Total of about 4 mech, 3 tank, 1 MLRS, 1 command post, 8 infantry, 2 vtol/stol
units for air support.

A Lance Captain in charge backed by a lieutenant and a Gunnery Sergeant to run
the show. About 30 combat personal. Able to bring a lot of fire power to bear
on the enemy. Plus having enough combined arms to deal with most threats.

Now organize these CAOC into battalions of six + one company is full of
support personal and equipment. We have a big enough force to consider when one
counts armor and air power as the prime assets and infantry more so for close
in MOUT and Commando work.

24 ‘Mechs
18 Main Battle Tank
at least 6 pieces of missile artillery.
12 Attack Choppers / Fighter-Bombers
48 Infantry with battle armor
6 Command Trunks to provide logistics and communications.

Per battalion. Now if we organized the force into regional commands based on
Regiments of 2-4 Battalions where preferably we have a battalion capable of
operating on its own and a regiment capable of transporting itself any where in
or around the planet.

Organize logistics, support, and command systems around a Divisional level with
the Regimental Combat Teams making up the back bone of the military force. And
I think we might have a fun CBT style game to play, or a funky study in future
military tech.

Plus a naval unit to supply sea and space based operations. Plus air power like
what the USAF would be tasked with. You could say its my
battletech/gundam/macross loving background but I consider ‘Mechs and air power
the prime focus of a modular combined arms task force.

Hmm, if I had the time I think I’d write a TBS (Turn Based Strategy) game on
this…

Ahhh Rubin sandwhiches, a cheese bear claw and a litre of Mug root beer + a zonk’d out nap. Now thats how to take it easy after 3 sortes. Took the bosses dogs to the vet, came home got our dogs. Whent to work then dropped our dogs off at home. Then picked up the bosses dogs at the vet and took them to work. 0.o

Sigh, what do you do when life hands you a $>1+ burger and tells you to chow down ? To bad we can’t just send it back to the cook… I’ve got work extra early so I have to get to sleep ASAP, yeah like thats gonna happen. I know my self better then that. We’ve got to take 3 of the bosses dogs to get their teeth done. Then start a new job, then pick up the dogs. And Thursday not only do I have to do our biggest work day. But we also got to take the bosses other 3 dogs to the vet. Joy, me and Barny getting sat on and licked to death my Macy while Leo fiddles about… Barny is nearly 20 years old, blind and nearly deaf. Macy is bigger then me had if shes an ounce lighter then 70lbs I’d be shocked. Dogs the kind you give a WIDE birth and avoid getting sat on. But sweet as can be. Leo’s just a big loveable mutt of about 55-65lbs. And I’m gonna get sat on I know it, I just know it lol. I get up, I work, I try to get to sit on my ass for af ew. Try & get a few games in, do my work /w the [SAS] e.t.c. and its heck at times. While my moms ‘active’ on or off her couch. I can’t do a lot. Because I’m the errend boy and what ever I’m doing no matter what. Is and can never be more important then any thing she wants. Yeah, thats it. I see the FreeBSD kernel as a work of art to read, a thing of beauty. To my mom? Bah she’d probably call it worthless trash. When its just as much art as the works of Michelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni) Michelangelo had a talent with his hands and heart taken to sculpture. Just the same, in code form and engineering design from where I stand. So is the FreeBSD kernels sources. Damn its like reading the work of a master. Sigh, no coding to night. Since I have to go to bed.. not like I’m likely to sleep worth a fart in the wind. How can one sleep when ones mind is free in torment ? I dunno. Heck if I was a drinking man. I think I’d be stone cold by now, sad thing I’m not maybe.. *SIGH* Why, why… can’t things just work. I work like a dog, and what do I have to show for it? I’ve seen a do be treated better. Now thats kind of sad isn’t it? lol. ph|_|{|<. In a way, I miss times since past. Yet at the same times hate them with ernest. No longer a pet spider, not enslaved yet still forced to toil.. well I now I’m not making much sense but. To make a long story short. Don’t ask, just leave ‘pet spider’ alone, its an emotion thats not going any where fast. I remember, being able to spend hard times in the company of som eone ho cared.. it was a good thing. Who knows maybe I’ll again share such a thing with some one special. I know the relationship we had was, I admit in the end not the way it had began. Lol, the tease put out of conmission by the one who wouldn’t flex. Uhh never mind that too. Life was kinda good for awhile, but it did teach a very good lesson. When they stop complaining after you havn’t shaved a week and things heat up even more. Be alarmed, be very very alarmed. ph|_|{|< only one to get me to exersie. What the frig was I thinking man.. like I don’t get enough of that at work ha ! I dunno any more. Was life really any better that way then it is like this ? Some times I wonder..but I think it is, or at least no worse. Oh well, at least shes not around to tempt me… man I wish I could dive into some code for the night.. but no I’ve got to get to bed.

Ever think about some thing and not be able to get it out of ya head? Then when you try to you can’t remeber the details ? Hah I’m crazy. Oh well back to BBC Radio 1 and some ANSI C.

I have been perhapes, more greatly honored then I ever thought I could be.

Who knows, maybe they will put me to good use without over working my sorry @l2$$

My scratch pad.

>3. any tryout should be posted on the calendar so everyone in the clan
>knows that there will be a tryout. Before you make the appointment, the
>tryout administrators need to be all lined up.

Now if I could just wrangle a few people into the right position at the same time. If I have to, I’ll conduct this tryout my self although I’d really like it if a LCpl can do it.

Supplimental note to self, be more agressive if neccessary about getting people involved then come as you are lets get the flubber done on time.

Some how its ironic, mine is a gneration that may be best noted for ‘dis-functional’ familes. But mine tends to work on the un-functional side…

Sigh, back to code I guess.

Made to feel like a floor flushing heel just because I’m trying to learna new library and toy with an old program. Well, new library for me if not for the likes of people like Bill Joy….

Is it my fault that I couldn’t work on stuff during the day after work? Well I knew she was gonna change her bloody mind about not going out shopping today. So I didn’t start any thing, sure enough she did. Ya get a feel for it after awhile !

So, out of the store by 2215Z (1715 local) and home to what? Chores x 3 different fields. Few spare moments before dinner to type of the ncurses version of hello world, didn’t even have a chance to compile the puke. So after dinner, after putting the leftovers away with a chaptor of R6 in between. And being stuffed full of leftover pie she wants to get rid of (from Christmas/NYE). I finnally got some time, so I boot my laptop. I had been doing the leg work on Vectra from ssh on SAL so I could use Vi and GCC without that vile cmd.exe, worthless terminal emulator imho. Ma’s watching the soaps, lucky for me I have zsh set not to beep a lot…

Ya know its not exactly my fault that Vi does not give you the greatest warning that your at the EOF other then a BEEP. Sheesh man, I’m trying to _L E A R N_ some thing and I’m made to feel like a crimenal. What the heck… Oh and of course since its not my ‘School work’ it doesn’t matter worth a damn eh? Well pluck you – people used to go to college just to get access to a frigging compiler years ago !!! Let along having the internet to help learn about such things. Dang gum it.

She’ll raise all hell, tackle a bison to the ground if it denies her Respect but you so much as make a sound while the soaps are on and your on top of Amercias Most Wanted. Shes watching TV, some thing I as a former couch potato must of my younger life admit. I don’t do often – I’d rather learn some thing. Does she care? Not a fricking damn bit. If it was in the name of my over due biology test rather then trying to learn my way around ncurses. And skim threw a few files in /usr/src. I think she’d still treat me like this…

Its a sad fact I’ve been learning these days. That a man can starve tp death on a full belly. Some times I wish, I didn’t know that Luke 4:4 was right in more ways then I first thought.

I try to be respectful of others, I’m sorry for the beeps. I even asked if she wanted me to switch to the desktop. I was using a TTYV or ‘Virtual Console’ instead of KDE, because all I needed was my shell, ssh client, vi, lynx, and gcc. No need for a big GUI for accessing a box w/o X11 eh?

I think, I hate my life…. dispair out rules joy I think, for me any way. To her Michelangelo’s Pietà and David are art. And yes it is very greatly so. But to me, so is every bit of what I see in the FreeBSD sources, some thing I want to study and learn from. Just as Michelangelo had once learned from the working of human bodies how to better create sculpture. To me, source code is a work of art if its done right. For me, things such as FreeBSD, Linux, Vim, are all works of art. I’d yern to study under a master programmer…..

Ysterday, we got a tornado warning. About 20 minutes heads up to get to cover. Two dogs /w collars + harnesses, ma, me, bird, newt, and fish in the bathroom with supplies.

Since Mikey (parakeet) has his cage on a table, a playpen on a few boxes (my old school books haha) and a close rack turned into a toy rack full of perches. All netted in with a thin mesh. We had to get him caged and out of there. I yanked off the computers, pulled the cordless phones/networking gizmos closer to storm time.

I’m glad that I got to stick to my operational doctrine. Leave no one behind, I’d rather blow away trying then leave them. The storm passed within about 7-15km so we where fine. Where we live we usually get no damage, trees sway but hold hehe. Mostly had rain but no wind/hail.

Prayer beats fear, and although I don’t think I quite learned it in the context En4cer ment. I get the idea that you don’t just sit there and take a dump. You keep going, firing, aiming, engaging, or you die.

I tared and bziped all the files I wanted to save from my home directory and
copied my /etc directory and /boot/loader.conf file to my recovery partition.

I opened konqueror and navigated to my smb shares to copy the 660MB.tar.bz2
file over. Thats not to bad for 800+ MB of files hehe.

Booted off the 1.3 install disk (disk 1) and slected an upgrade for my 1.3
install. Yes to allow NTP and BSDStats. THen it stated with the update.

Reboot whent without problem, it generated a new ssh keys e.t.c. I was unable
to login, I wasn’t sure if KDE wasn’t starting or if the update broke my login
database or some thing because I had rebuilt it after making some
configuration changes or what. I switched to a ttyv and tried to login, I got
as far as the new motd and bombed out back to getty with the error message that
/usr/local/bin/zsh didn’t exsist. Ok no problem there, logged in as root and
did a portinstall of shells/zsh

Desktop was mostly normal the only changes being my icon set and wallpaper was delted so I got the defaults. Even Vim which Iinstalled from source was removed. Aramroki.pbi is broken by this update:

Amarok could not find any sound-engine plugins. Amarok is now updating the KDE configuration database. Please wait a couple of minutes, then restart Amarok.
If this does not help, it is likely that Amarok is installed under the wrong prefix, please fix your installation using:
$ cd /path/to/amarok/source-code/
$ su -c “make uninstall”
$ ./configure –prefix=`kde-config –prefix` && su -c “make install”
$ kbuildsycoca
$ amarok
More information can be found in the README file. For further assistance join us at #amarok on irc.freenode.net.

Gee thanks PC-BSD.

My USB stick does not automount when I plug it in. I don’t really mind since I tend to leave it in and have to mount it by hand. Now look at this:

Terry@Dixie$ mount /mnt/da0s1 17:24
mount: /mnt/da0s1: unknown special file or file system
Terry@Dixie$ mount_msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mnt/da0s1 17:25

EXACTLY the samerly thing that was in the RC, fixed my ass. The onyl difference is it failed to mount the drive. On my fresh install on the desktop it auto-mounted to /media/LEXAR a temp mnt point that bypassed the documented /mnt/da0s* all together. On here I have to mount it specifically as a fat32 fs from the CLI.

Now very strangely every thing that was installed into /usr/local/ is gone. Yet for example wmclockmon and blackbox. They are no longer in the database /var/db/pkg according to pkg_info but they are still installed into /usr/X11R6/ so I think they did a booboo here. I’m very interested in just what exactly the installers upgrade feature does to my system.

The end result is that every PBI must be reinstalled from Seamonkey to Java. The least they could’ve done if they wanted to erase every thing installed into /usr/local period was to rm all in /Programs too. So now if I ever have a problem installing a new version of blackbox or any thing window maker before the translition is comlete. They will here from me directly !!

Even the entire linux compat was FUBAR. Realplayer.pbi made by Kris Moore RPM’d in its deps but they are gone. Yet the 1.3 upgrade installed a FC4 Linux ABI. Complete with linux flashplugin wrapper. Since I need gmake to build most stuff I know of using GTK, if QT needs any thing other then qmake probably you need gmake for QT/KDE apps too.

Luckly my gkrellm2.pbi is ran from my Autostart directory stright from the PBI in /Programs rather then my path. So no problem there. Copied over my wallpapers and its good I have the old icon sets as part of my KDE icon sets PBI that I was working on. It would auto install any of them if not detected and delete them all at removal if one wanted.

THANK GOD the new Kaffeine is more stable it was driving me crazy. At least I have some thing that will play .ogg files now danke !

Since my install of the allcodecs PBI installed to /usr/lib I don’t expect any problems with media playback unless I install some thing from ports. Personally I think I will just cut up the pbi db and rm most of /Programs/* and start over. At least my system seems stable. I see changes in /PCBSD/cardDetect but as long as I don’t have to screw around to get my resolution back I’m happy enough.

It seems they didn’t meddle with /etc to much good because I lost my backup of it. I fixed /etc/login.conf and a few fles to spec and rebuild the db. Think I lost al changes in /etc/ssh but I can borrow a copy from Vectra.

So far the half assed job of uninstalling software before hand and breaking most of my PBIs aside and making me have to type 2x as much to mount my USB stick aside. I’m happier with the upgrade then with the fresh install. I see they owned my loader.conf file so is it a wonder my Atheros card is not detected ? I’ll merge these real quick after checking the diff. I don’t know what they did that I see no sound drivers being loaded at without using loader.conf or defualts/loader.conf but hopefully it will help people getting sound working.

I loaded my wlan and ath modules and got back online in a snap. Unpacked my always on hand copy of the vim source code in /tmp and began to configure and gmake it with gtk20 support. The changes made to konquerors profiles were lost on me since I customized most of them in my home directory. I usually use PersonalBrowser and SmallExplorer or Kommander the ones I made any way.

To clean up the PBI problem I removed all broken PBI directories from /Programs.
I removed the scripts in /Programs/.sbin that they used. I removed the entries from /Programs/.config/ProgList after backing it up just in case. It says not to edit by hand but I don’t think I can do much damage with a backup in hand. Still I don’t trust any of the PC-BSD utils as far as I can throw a 100 Ton Atlas. I removed a few things in /usr/local/share that were left over. I changed over to /usr/local/share/applnk/My Programs where the K-Menu entries for PBI are kept. And eracticated the ones left.

I removed the borken links in /usr/X11R6/* and /usr/home/Terry/.kde/share/applnk/M Programs/. Of course I could have used PC-BSDs software manager to do most of this but I would rather keep that strong connection with my system that I have from regular usage. So far life is good, I’ll just make an alias or a script for mounting my USB stick and assuming that the Amarok.pbi is totally incompabible with PC-BSD 1.3 I will half to make some packages on my desktop and jet them over. Hopefully there won’t be much problem with it

So far the update looks to have gone good. Stabiltiy may be better then it was
before, software is up to date without me having to compile it all for 24
hours. BSDStats should now track my system and it seems the denyhosts stuff was
setup but I don’t think PF was, good I’ve been needing to read the manual on
that any way.

What was the cost? Downloading the install disks ISO and burning it to a CD-R.
Having to reinstall much software, most of which was installed via PBI or
stright from sources, having to clean up after the upgrade broke/remove it all
(I did it the harder way), Loosing my many icon sets and wallpapers. Lucky for
me I keep my wallpapers in my home directory and copy them over to KDE hehe ^_^
and I was working on a PBI full of icon sets. The highest price, Amarok my
favorite music player. Also my /usr/local/projects folder with the files for my
KDE icon sets, Amarok styles (lucky I have this one in my home dir), Ogle, Vim,
Blackbox, xmss and others that I forgot to backup before PC-BSD wasted it by
mistake.

Oh wells theres always ports 🙂