Leftover home made Mac & Cheese for breakfast at 0630 – cheap.
Having slept late and still beat sunrise out by several hours – priceless.
A chuckle at NTFs expense
In glancing at their roster, I just noticed they have 8 officers to 7 Enlisted, and only just recently did they gain NCOs in that mixture, lol. Some how, I am reminded of something my Grandfather once said about officers…
That NTF has yet to grow past being made up of dissenters and tag alongs is understandable given their pace of movement (I observe about 1.5 x GCHQ speed on average), even if there structure suggests they provision for reaching more than double their present size. I guess none of their planners have heard of the bubble before, hahaha.
Fun idea, or just paranoid?
Tunneling basic services (web browsing, instant messaging, etc) over SSH through the file server (connected via Ethernet), as extra guard against the workstations own encrypted wifi eventually failing.
Nah, I am just nuts… lol.
Noticing Booone’s Avatar on the [SAS] forums, I can’t help but think their admins and moderators are collectively lazier than ever.
Just a stretch of the legs
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.
If Vista is a dog, I’m a hairy monkey
I just got finished reading an article involving Steve Ballmer and Vista, and I can’t help but find it patronizing lol.Windows Vista was a huge success: for Windows 7!
Microsoft did with Vista, something they *should* have done by XP Service pack 2, if not with XP itself. For eons developers have been doing *nasty* things with Windows, and either through compatibility requirements with 9x, or sheare developer incompetence, there has also been a lot of software that, should we say, is little evolved beyond Win32s or the MS-DOS style. Some of the commercial apps I’ve seen over the years, I am actually shocked will run under XP, let along Vista and 7—despite everyone’s gripes, it’s one of the things MS gets right.
Most of the more verbose complaints that I’ve heard about Vista, are not the OSes fault. More often it falls upon the realm of stupid application developers, flaky software, or stupid users. Microsoft has also been about as smart on handling the conversion of users, from a DOS model to a proper NT model, to a more modern NT model (read modern as in post 1960s), as the government is about spending <_<. Most of the software issues have ironed out by brute force, there is just no choice, because Windows NT 6.1 (7) is not that far from NT 6.0 (Vista).
Considering that it had to happen eventually, either by a painstaking multi-generation (of users) process of evolution and education, and that the general brain damaged failure of Vista to win users hearts, is almost the quintessential Microsoft recipe for success: a mixture of bait and switch with the old triple-E.
Windows 7 is not Vista, and it makes sufficient adjustments to make most people happy. After enough time of having to deal with Vista, everything but the stupid users (and bogoware) have largely caught up, plus you have the appeasing impact of Win7, mated to the users already knowing how to ‘live’ with Vista.
The positive aspects of what Vista has done for 7s success, could not have been more valuable, if Microsoft had planned it before the whole blackcomb/longhorn/vienna thing was even worked out. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was planned.
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.