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After much protest and being threatened, I finally completed my trip to the library on foot. The outlook for potential execution days being Monday, Thursday, or Friday. During work Tuesday, I noted the possibility, but ma’s errands were much to time consuming. My original pan for today, being to start out around 0830 or 0930 local time, and aim to be home cica lunch, but being prompted for more errands, it was already lunch time when I set out o/.

I made quite good time, carrying about a load of about 7 to 7 1/2 lbs: my laptop and associated items, just in case. The computerized card catalog is virtually worthless in my experience, and it’s simply easier to find books by hunting on shelves; much as finding good books with the old card catalog, usually was done by seeing what cards came up in flipping through to whatever you were looking for lol. So I made sure to setup an offline reference, to how the local library organises books. I really do not mind walking, so much as I mind Georgia’s driver’s. Only real thing I can complaine about, 10″ to 15″ brush can be a pain to go through at a rapid pace.

Aside from a few cars having a bit of a dual, basically driving in the left lane, and practically on the left side of the road,  things were fairly uneventful… should we say, I’m not easily squashed. The only real hiccup, was stepping on a screw along the last half kilometre: I could feel it pressing on the bottom of my foot, and ended up kneeling along side the road, trying to pull it out: in the end I had to use my wireless card to pry it out of the outsole. I think if I felt around on the inside, I’d probably find a pin sized hole in the insole to match lol. Not the first time something like that has happened to me over the years though. On the upside, if anything serious had happened, I was within limping distance of the hospital >-<.

While walking, I noticed that the ~200ml I had to drink before hand, wasn’t enough, but it made up for the mornings driving about. Fortunately as I remembered, the library has a drinking fountain in the main entry hall ;). Still, I would fancy being able to carry my canteen along :-/. For starters after arriving, I decided to head towards literature: something to sooth my mind rather than put it through its paces. I’m more interested in the science and technical sections >_>.

I sat and read much of the first act of King Lear, before deciding to start heading home; less HRP get to worried 8=). I also checked out the copy of the book; judging by the texts notes, it looks like it airs on the side of the first folio with elements of the first quatro being merged. There’s nothing special about the selection of King Lear, of the works on the shelf, it piqued my interest most; it’s also been on my list of things to find time for, in some decade or other. Checked out the book, so I could continue reading it… and to see just how much annoyance I’ll have to deal with in between marches.

The ability to read the classics, is minor: since I can do that from the comfort of my own computer; in fact, I have several stored for off line reading! However, being able to sit and read, in PEACE, is priceless! That’s one of the reasons I love libraries, you can actually sit an read without being disturbed a whole lot; excellent place to study.

As for the return trip, it was fairly uneventful, it just reminded me that I’m still out of shape lol. I ran a few 40-60m stretches of the trip, after that, I started to get fatigued a bit. This is what I get for working in the family business all these years, instead of enlisting when I still had a good chance. When I got home, I prompted drained a good 500ml of water before sitting down.

I’ve spent the last few hours, working on my tactics guide. I had decided to throw out what I did for my tactical compendium and start a new, as it would be much easier then stripping out the [SAS] parts. My tactical guide, is completely my own product, and a reflection of my operating experience.

So far out of about 2 1/2 days, there are about twenty pages covering stacking, breaching, entering, clearing, and searching rooms in great depth, as well as door handling, dealing with causalities, shot placement, securing contacts, and a lot more. Except for the P/L and comms sections, the material is already covers everything an seasoned NCO should know in their sleep. [SAS], eat your heart out….

Among my personal work, are over a dozen original illustrations that I’ve created to accompany the guides text. My favourite of which, serves to explain the strong/weak side thing:

I also sent that drawing to someone in [SAS], who was suitably and utterly confounded the ever loving hell out of on that particular issue. How he got so confused, was during the environment in [SAS] at the time, mostly created by the folks now holding officer ranks in NTF, or Sgts stripes in [SAS], and a rather sickening mess behind it. As to explaining the tactical matter: what’s so damn hard about strong/weak side…. it’s so simple that a child could understand it.

If having to pass time was an art form….

It’s funny, how Willow and Corky wrestle, and I look at Coco, and just say, “Someday we’ve gotta retire to our own island”, and she just stares at me, as if to say what the hell are you talking about lol.

This is part of an e-mail in my recent backlog, and thought I might note it here:

1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.

13. Using a pen and made a mistake?  Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!

I wonder if the bit about the garden and hangover are true; someday, I’ve gotta try the stainless steel—it’s always a megapain to clean stainless steel appliances! Although for many cleaning tasks, I have to admit that baking soda is a little miracle worker in many regards, hmm wonder how that would work on steel…

Now this would be a rather handy solution, if my laptop had some more expendable key to re-purpose as a compose ey. The right alt keys closeness to the arrow cluster, makes it a very handy way to “Go back” in history using any program that behaves like a web browser. And I couldn’t live without using my menu key to quickly access spelling corrections in pidgin >_>.

However if I could make xmodmap or something else to bind meta+menu into acting as a compose key, that would work.quite nicely.

I’ve begun operational planning next courses of action, and have decided to accelerate and expand “Ravenclaw” in scope. Originally my intention was to kick off a round of increased physical / mental training after getting my license, as extra insurance against petrol resources being cut off before I can get a paying job.

It is so named Ravenclaw, because its attributes and impact resemble the positives of a raven and it’s sharp effective claws, and at worst, I’ll just end up food for ravens in the process. Walking any where here, tends to be dangerous outside of downtown: they’re finally making plans to start building more sidewalks in the rest of this place. The main problem isn’t so much that there is no safe place to walk near most areas, so much as you can’t trust the cars not to flatten you. In some places here, it’s almost suicidal. Given numbers to, value of travel * risk factor – value of life; should we say, the value of life increasingly becomes a smaller number in that expression, the more and more negative impact family has on my goals. I’ll take my chances.

The first in the series of travel plans is fairly short: about 2.5km, covering two main roads and two side roads. The destination of course, being the sole refuge of sanity in this city: the library. I’ve said for years, I could practically ‘live’ there! That distance should take less than 45 minutes, even if some lousy driver forces me to practice evasive manoeuvres that I haven’t done in many years. Probably will be a lot shorter, given my normal walking pace. At that range, even if I ran instead of walked, I also won’t need to worry about bringing water. I’m like a human camel, between growing up in Florida and the working hours I’ve had to pull over the years. As necessary to achieve my aims, I’m more that willing to go well over 25km each way on foot if need be. The library being the closet target, makes it the best testing mark to begin clocking my general traveling pace, so I can expand the data set towards proper time estimates. Ops will likely begin next week, and begin scaling from there.

For me, the only practical limitation to my traveling distance by foot, is legality (e.g. some roads are closed to pedestrian traffic) and endurance factors. I wouldn’t mind walking from here to Alaska if needed. When I fish out my old canteen, I think I’ll calculate it’s capacity. I also have an old militaresque bag designed to be slung, which makes transporting things easier: like carting my laptop with me or a coat for nastier weather. Carrying things over distance isn’t a problem, so much as there’s only so many places you can ‘carry’ it in with you. In Georgian weather on the other hand, I can cover plenty of ground at a walk, and not become overly dehydrated in the process, so I don’t worry much.

If I’m going to be fought at every step, I’ll damn well exercise what can’t be taken for me. Having a entrance key, also makes sure I can’t be locked out (so easily) in retaliation. As long as things are going this way, I’ll take chances on foot… it beats the alternatives.

I consider life here, under flag of war – feuer frei!

It’s been a somewhat productive day, but one that’s had me ready to bounce off walls for much of it. With HRP out of my hair for just over an hour, I was able to to move without having to exposing anything to the usual family-de-railing events, that tend to occur whenever my mothers abreast of my plans.

Managed to take care of the enqueued phone calls on my list, including finding info a friend had requested in the same matter. About half a dozen phone calls, and four bits of intelligence to gather, all of which were solved, except for the sole fun one o/. That will have to wait until another target of opportunity since the fishing hole is closed this time of week, but everything that was important got done. Having about 5 minutes to spare, before having to return to a rate of 3-5 interruptions a cycle + being cussed at all day, I also decided to proceed with a few other things that were supposed to wait until post-license.

The main problem, is still that damn license! Reaching the required mark of 40 hours, is proceeding at a rate of roughly 1 1/2 hours x 1 week = meaning 18 weeks more until I’ll have enough hours to apply for a license. Since 5 more of the remaining 27 hours to go, have to be night driving, it’ll probably take longer knowing my mother… I’ve got to find some way around this road block—and without lying about the amount of practice time I’ve had! Perhaps I might not be much good as a person, but when I say that I something, you can generally bet high that it’ll be truthful.

• Backups of my old RvS and SWAT 4 keybinds, in Englush and German.
• Old BF2  profile data backed up from 2009
• A collection of xfire chatlogs dating back to 2007-2008; usually I trim my logs every couple of years
• Copy of my bookmarks, left over from the original migration to ma.gnolia.
• A copy of the first chat I had with a friend, dated 2008-08-17.
• Various bits of TeX/LaTeX and troff/nroff documentation
• Bundle of old programs, including my first C++ projects and many old Ruby, Perl, and Sh scripts.
• An old document on backing up PC-BSD systems.
• Some old software manuals, MicroEMACS, NFS systems, Nail, PHP, Java 1.5, ex, etc.
• Old [SAS] Live Operation files: maps, opords, notes from testing various maps in SWAT 4.
• An old draft resignation from when Snipers first draft of the SOPs were sent to Rouge for revision.
• Birthdate of my desktop PC: 2006-02-11. Back than it was top of the line.
• An old mock up for a personal home page
• Draft of what hostage rescue on Raven Shields banking house mission, would look like in the near future.if done with real world tactics
• Plenty of old photos

From all the files either deleted, or moved into cold-backup, I think my home directory is also another fifty megs lighter lol

I can’t believe I slept through The Picture of Dorian Gray, it’s so rare I get to see it :'(.

Even worse than that I was only awoken by orders to make another ficken waffle >_>.