Thoughts on life outside of [SAS]

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Since the last card in the hand I was dealt, has finally landed, I reckon it’s time to plot the course where I’ll go from here.

Game wise, whenever I play Raven Shield or SWAT 4, my primary stomping grounds will likely remain the [SAS] servers, because they’re the best servers you’ll find anywhere. Sometimes I visit other clans servers, but usually it’s ones I’m friendly with or when ours are having an outage. One of the things I have always liked about being in clans and friends with various clans, people know your name when you setup roots: and I have roots here. Before joining SW years and years ago during my MW4 career, I maintained friendly relationships with much of SW, OTC, and the leadership of the GSA branches of CGB and CSV. Even after becoming a Shadow Warrior, I kept those up, when possible even continuing to the present. Like wise that goes for most people who have passed through [SAS], I’ve kept up contact with many of them over the years, especially those closest to me. Most memorable people to cross our servers these past years, have known me in some form.

How much I’ll play of either game, I dunno. There is now less to weigh me down, so I can play more freely, and I can also work more as needed. I don’t plan to become a stranger though.

Really, I feel naked without my uniform: no more SAS_Rank_Spidey01 written all over the place. Obviously I have some things to change :-/. Spidey01 however is and always has been my name. Formal clan prefixes of DEx and [SAS]_Rank, having been groups close enough to my heart, to become a virtual part of my identity. On the other hand, being the *intelligent* sort of person, most of my stuff doesn’t revolve around [SAS]. For example my IM usernames don’t reference SAS, this has been a conscious decision from the vary start (cica 2005). The idea being, that my IM would become known, and if should anything ever happen, changing it would be a major pain: so I’ve avoided it all these years. Except for FreeNode, which now comes back to bite me in the arse lol. On the upside, I don’t have to constantly remind myself to omit the ’01’ in RvS!

 Most of the changes are trivial, updating signatures, shredding old files, closing old photo albums, and so on. The main gripe is waiting for my forum account to be returned to me.

On the subject of military tactics and their applications, I started learning about such things around 1995, and joined [SAS] during a chapter of my life, where I wished to focus in on close quarters combat. It remains to be seen, whether I’ll continue my studies, there really isn’t much more I can learn without firing an MP5, but it is a chapter of my life that I’ll never forget.

I’m still gonna be found naturally stacking up on doors lol.

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In a couple days, several [SAS] members will find a copy of my various contact data in their email, to help stay in touch.

Resigning My Warrant: Spidey01’s original

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Before dinner, this post was made by me in Clan Topics at approximately 00:29 UTC on www.sasclan.org:

 On March 24th an important issue arose between [SAS]_Maj_WIZ and myself, in regard to his apparent countermanding of established [SAS] SOP and long standing orders of [SAS]_Capt_En4cer. In dealing with both [SAS]_Maj_WIZ and [SAS]_CO_Random, to properly clarify and document the final outcome of this for it’s obvious *immeidate* impact on our training affairs, I have generally been screwed in one ear and out the other, or run around one three and six more blocks trying to resolve this.

For over a month I have been patient, whilst my CO has left my hands tied, unable to furfil my duties as a [SAS] Member, and I’ve met everything from the Major short of threatening my dogs life. Well gentlemen, I believe it is time to call this farce over. [b]If I cannot be allowed to furfil my duties, then I shall not hold my rank[/b].

It is with that in mind, that I hear by resign my Warrant.

I have served this team almost self sacrificially since the very moment that I landed foot on these hollow grounds… only to suffer countless incidences of the same over my years. Random, WIZ, En4cer, Rouge, Valroe, Sniper, Timbo, and Medic have all been apart of doing this to me over my many years, when I’m screwed a month straight by the Commanding Officer, I think it is time for a man to draw the line.

[color=yellow]It is my first ever and my parting order, that this post is not to be edited, nor is this thread to be moved.[/color]

That post was written as a text file on my laptop, and copy/pasted into the forums, just as it has been copy/pasted into this journal entry. What you see in the above quote, is exactly how I wrote it: it is the authoritative copy.

[SAS]_Maj_WIZ has since moved it: but I expect, has not edited it. After dinner, I addressed a private e-mail to [SAS]_CO_Random notifying him accordingly of this action, and putting my effects in order: namely that I expect my forum account returned to me once the locks are changed, and that I explicitly turn over all express legal rights to any code that I’ve contributed to [SAS], to any acting CO of the team past/present/future and for all time. Legally because of the U.S. involvement (on Randoms side), the code in question already belongs to [SAS]’s commanding officer, same as the draft documents Rouge and company submitted before leaving [SAS].

Having been sufficiently been further insulted and verbally threatened by the good Major, I’ve placed him on my IM clients temporary block list. I’ll not waste further breath with him on the issue.

Since this is my turf and not [SAS] private property, I will add a few details to my above post. The issue in question, I will explain it here.

In the public view (as of this time of writing, although I wouldn’t be surprised if [SAS] will remove it from public view, or *finally* edit the damn thing in response to this), on www.sasclan.org in the tactics section is an Raven Shield V-Comms SOP page that was authored by [SAS]_Capt_En4cer in 2007.

One of it’s entries says this:

V-4-6 =Objective Reached.

This command is issued by any elemental member. This command is most often heard following a ‘Reform On My Position’ command by the EL or once a member has reached their respective Point Of Domination (POD) during a dynamic entry, and lastly if the elemental member has been assigned to locate a specific location critical to mission success. Most often this location will be beyond the visual scope of the EL and this command acknowledges that the element member is alive, in the correct position for the task at hand and is able to engage threats as required. When the element initially forms up on the EL the only member that MUST say this command would be the Rear Guard for all other members this command is optional during initial form up.

This use of calling “Objective Reached” when taking your Point of Domination, is something that [SAS]_Capt_En4cer pushed down the necks of [SAS]_SSM_Spidey01 and [SAS]_SSM_Rasa years ago, and that we in turn pushed it out to the rest of the clan. In SWAT 4, we have used “On it” IAW the GCHQs approval. You can’t pass by our SWAT server without picking that up.

On the night of March 24th, in a private conversation with [SAS]_Maj_WIZ, the major countermanded this [SAS] SOP, and blatantly refused to notify the membership.

Since then, I have pushed very hard that if the MAJOR has just threw out that SOP, then every one must be informed that it has been null-n-voided. Other wise, the Major is wrong and has failed to keep up to date with [SAS] Tactical matters. My private conversations with the Major on the issue have had very brutal moments: as WIZ has admitted and spoken to me about over the years, what he has done to members (in particular the occasional cracker, people now residing in NTF, and ex SAS members not in good standing with SAS or NTF), I do not consider myself bound by [SAS] CoH in our private chats, any more than he has demonstrated his own obedience to it. As the Major only kept himself CoH bound (in that regard) when using [SAS] forum and VoIP systems, I followed the same conduct, having heard nothing from Random about it: not a peep over 6 years.

During my shoving to have the issue resolved, I also noted that if GCHQ would fail to notify the membership of this important (and sudden) change to active SOP, that as WO1, I must either issue an order of my own, notifying the membership, or I must give up my Warrant.

In doing so, I have had my honour and integrity questioned, accused of being an NTF agent (it’s WIZ’s job to do so in both those cases), and in effect, having my physical person threatened with bodily harm. I have also had to tolerate enumerable “Mind games”, which we all know how highly I consider those a disrespect for my intelligence.

[SAS]_CO_Random was contacted and asked to deal with this, as he is the only one with authority above Major. I was made to wait several weeks to receive so much as a word from Random on the issue, who has since done nothing — I have not been informed. Worse then that, it was only after (as friends rather then colleagues) notifying WIZ with a draft post, issuing the aforementioned order and requesting to GCHQ that I be demoted to [SAS]_Trp_Spidey01 — as that is the most value Randoms inaction has allowed me to contribute. Only after sending WIZ that message, did I hear from Random. I have not received further notification of this since then! This effectively made my position as WO1, totally pointless.

Today, I was notified by a LCpl about training still being conducted with “On it”, and noted this to [SAS]_Maj_WIZ in private: who summery brushed it off, after which I noted either the membership still needs notification or the LCpl in question needs a wuppin’ for the foul up. I was still met with the same run around.

Thus, I have resigned my warrant, and so conclude my responsibility as an [SAS] member.

Most of the past and present members in my Clan Topics post, have also had a huge impact (IMHO) in damaging the [SAS] I joined,  among other things: causing damage to the eliteness (WIZ has fought against this), and something I hear NTF members grip about their leadership over! Every action I’ve taken or planned to curb that problem in [SAS] in the years leading up to the recent falling out of several members, has been met with my superiors tying my hands, or delegating it to incompetents. So this was just the biggest insult of them all.

So at this point: I do not feel, that I have left the [SAS] that I joined, I feel that the team I have loved all these years, is being or has been pushed over the edge of existence.

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Lately in my spare time, as one might guess: I’ve been picking up C#. That, and reading about electrical wiring and stuff, but I always new I’d light myself up one day xD.

Before bed, I was experimenting with building and structuring assemblies. Being my typical self, this of course means playing with the command line csc (MS) and mcs/gmcs (Mono) compilers, as well as their associated tools. IDE wise, I experimented with MonoDevelop under FreeBSD and the express edition of Visual C# 2010 under XP.  I must admit that as far as IDEs go, MonoDevelop is a pretty good one: the only negative things that I can say about it, being the vi mode is very minimalist (G doesn’t even take a count), and it’s not the most responsive program when the computers under heavy load: but still knocks Mozillas socks off by 9 warp factors :-P. Visual C# on the other hand, I can’t say how the 2010 version differs from the 2008 one: only that it’s not nice. To be honest, my first encounters with the express editions for Visual Studio 2010, shows me that Microshaft seems to have a policy of (yet again) hiding much of the tools from the user. Just starting Visual C# makes me remember how long Windows has hidden file permissions from the user by default. Perhaps most Windows users are to damn stupid to understand the concept of “Privacy”, but any jackinape permitted to touch source code, should at least be made to understand the concept of debug and release builds (a heck of a lot better then VS’s new defaults).

In my experiments using MonoDevelop and Visual C#, it only took a few seconds before I became glad that Vi IMproved doesn’t emulate Intellisense; but it is fair to say that I’m a freak: my customised vim setup even disables syntax highlighting lololol.

And considering how much this build of Firefox has Flash burning through CPU cycles, I think my laptop is going to heat, if I don’t call this a morning :-S.

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Oy gevalt, this port is compiling gcc44 as a build dependency. What is this, karmic retribution for my refusal to upgrade gcc45 today? HAHAHAHA

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Lately I’ve noticed with getting up so early, now that I’m averaging like 0300-0700 local:  a couple hours nap in the afternoon really rocks!

It’s like, the sun isn’t up yet, but I’m ready to run a marathon. I’ve found enjoyably, that I’m naturally falling asleep earlier, which gives my mind less time to drift at night, and that I’m getting up early enough to be able to get more work done than killing myself burning the midnight oils. By the afternoon or late morning (if I got up urber early), I tend to plunk out, more like how I used to get a few hours before I would have to raise a crash to pillow exception whilst coding. Just dropping off for a nap, I find very regenerating. Setup the laptop on the ground to play my radio stream, put something on the TV: so that I’ll have a point of reference for how much time as passed (clocks suck). Then settle down for a nice nap at the foot of the bed o/.

Perhaps, I should officially call this my concept of a siesta! Either way, my waking hours are still something like 19-21 hours a day… if I don’t pass out eventually lol. Today I had like a nice two hour nap, feels great; especially combined with sleeping *late* until 0500 this morning.

One of the reasons I’ve desired a conversion from night owl to early bird, is I’ve noticed after numerous hacking runs, like running 3-days straight cycles of coding from 1100 to 0700 (exhausting itself), that if I don’t sleep at night, I’m terrible in the ‘morning’. It’s like, if I skip sleep, or just stay up ’til dawn, that I have a heavy pressure in my chest: and I don’t like that. Strangely while I’m arguably sleeping less, my current sleep patterns actually have me feeling in better health/strength, than I have felt in over a lustrum.

I’m at a loss to explain it, except to think that my body likes the new (more natural) rhythm a lot more than the old one lol. It’s kind of like I’m finding a new and better form of time sharing between activeness and sleepiness.

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Fell asleep only to get woken up a few hours later, because ma couldn’t decided whether or not to crate the bosses dog (which we’re watching here for a bit) during the coming storm. Went back to sleep, only to be waken up in a couple hours, once the storm hit full force.

After waking up from a nightmare around 10:00, and no luck in going back to sleep….. I’m stuck wide awake o/.

Old MechWarriors never die, we just go back to the scrapheap

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Spent some time playing MW4 again, and finding myself slipping into old grooves like they never left.

Still was able to dance around, targeting a Cauldron-Born while keeping it between me and a heavier Templer. No problems zipping my Centurion into position to hammer away at the enemy ‘Mech, while scooting out of their firing envelope by the time their guns reload, maximum turn and burn.

I even found myself tactically directing the lance, more soundly than in times past actually, because of how much experience I’ve got as an Element Leader in [SAS]. That, and I still remember almost every tactical trick in the ‘Meching game lol.

My dumbest python moment ever….

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In cleaning up tmk’s cache related code for a fresh commit, I wrote an expand2str() method that encapsulates the issue of dealing with expand() returning a list of expansions, and a properly converted string being desired anyway.

Suddenly I noticed this backtrace:


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "tmk.py", line 929, in 
    process_recipe(recipe)
  File "tmk.py", line 742, in process_recipe
    recipe.parse()
  File "tmk.py", line 276, in parse
    if not self.eval_pproc_directive(p):
AttributeError: Recipe instance has no attribute 'eval_pproc_directive'

Which is totally ridiculous, because eval_pproc_directive and parse are both methods of the same class. While the former is defined after the latter, by the time the instance (self) exists, the class is fully defined. Making a short test case, proved that the act of one in a billion hadn’t changed Pythons rules about this stuff.

In poking around to see what changed introduced during this commit, may have popped the magic cork, I noticed removing the reference caused the same type of error, successively on methods defined after they were invoked.

Then I saw it!

I had accidentally indented the expand2str() method one short, there by making it a function rather then a class method, and there by doing like wise and making them nested methods inside expand2str().

Sometimes Python really irks the typoist in me!

Life proves my calculations right…. yet again dear mother!

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While perusing the developer documentation for Chromes extensions system, ma gave me a summery of a phone call she just had: namely that she is now looking at an $80/month loss in revenue. As their own business is going under, one of the clients that we’ve worked for, must be at least three or four years now, won’t be able to maintain regular cleaning. Thus things are tight all round.

I pointed out to my mother on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday, and numerous times before this, that if it wasn’t for her shafting me over driving, that I would likely have been gainfully employed outside her business by now… which would have been darn handy in light of today’s news! My families been allotted inklings of my plans since at least ’09, and they’ve done nothing but screw me over every which way: looks like I was right, doing so wasn’t in anyone best interests ^_^.

The massive time delays ma has already forced on my short term plans, has caused me to miss the ideal hiring point for my original business plan, and I’ve already shoved (and reaffirmed!), that I ain’t doing jack until I’ve got my Class C and it’s been proven that I’ll have sufficient use of the car, to be able to hold down a steady job. Should we say, over the last ~twenty years, my family has given me enough cause, that I don’t trust them as far as I can throw an Atlas.

My war policy is unconditional victory.