An orange in an apple orchard
So far, I think I’ve been existing largly on salt today lol. Breakfast was Cashews and Peanut Butter toast. Lucnh, heh… A ton of potato chips :
I managed to hit PG#1 fairly early today, I think the poor recruits were ready to pass out by the time, that we should have been starting training. I spent most of the time either making like a maniac on roller blades with a TMP. Or tagging along with Ez,Nick, and Caern in an element. It’s been a rather dynamic day lool.
Finally some time to catch up on my LJ, if I can keep my family at bay long enough to type anything meaningful >_>
Got off to a semi-early start, last night I was fairly wasted from the days ops and dropped off to sleep very quickly, all concepts of work largely forgotten until morning. Had to stop off today, Ma decided to upgrade cell phones, her new Motoorola W490 is quite nice. I don’t particularly care much for cell phone though.
So far SAL1600 is 90% of fully operational, I’ve only had minor problems. One, my mic doesn’t work and the sound drivers are pretty shitty, but on the upside seem to be much more stable then the older ones. Maybe my jokes were right after all, WHQL just means it’s certified to suck and help crash your system. I was warned when installing the newest ones from the manufactor, that they weren’t WHQL certified or what not, no biggy for me, because I know what kinda horse shit the company usually passes off for audio drivers lol. I really wish there was something like the Open Sound System for Windows, alas Windows sound technology is probably a good system. The only problem is, drivers!
Another issue is my Flock profile, I think it’s probably a paths issue. On the old box Flock was installed into it’s standard path of %ProgramFiles%Flock (e.g. C:Program FilesFlock) and my profile in %AppData%FlockBrowserProfiles… where %AppData% was formally “C:Documents and SettingsOwnerApplication Data”. On my new install, everything is installed into a ‘category’ folder in P:, e.g. P:GamesRavenShield, P:NetworkBrowsersFlock. And likewise my use profile is in U:Terry. It’s been somewhat problematic getting Windows to agree with me on such, especially the brain dead idea of it trying to copy a huge DVD sized ISO in U:TerryDesktop to C:Documents and SettingsTerryDesktop and bloating my C drive out. Maybe it is just my not knowing the management programs in Windows as well as UNIX or Windows XP is just totally brain damaged by design, I hope the latter but expect it is the former…
The software is willing but Windows is not so cooperative ^_^
The system has however been quite stable of late, pardoning IE7 crashing and a few other paths issues with my profile. I’ve also taken to having a cmd.exe window open on my second monitor most of th day. I find the DOS-inherited commands to be very child like and overly clumsy compared to any BSD or GNU/Linux based system I’ve used. The whole ruckus between copy, xcopy, and robocopy commands/programs on Windows is a nuts, I’ll never understand it… Not after having lived with /bin/cp so long.
I managed to get into TG#1 for some games today, training with Nick, Caern, and Ez. It seems that I’ve taken care of a fair bot of training arrangements lately, all part of an evil plan of course…. Muahuahauah !!! Who knows, maybe this aging war horse will get to see more action soon 😉
Windows XP is about 5% and still going strong on the game machine. Really, if I didn’t need RvS and SWAT 4, I wouldn’t even have XP on that machine lol…. My only dependency on Micro$oft is an OS that supports games –> I generally dislike console games.
0/ My current plan of action is to conduct the reformat/reinstall of XP.
1/ Verify that the S.O.B. boots… Install core drivers (GPU, Wifi)
2/ Strip her naked — remove the “pre-installed” software and trial-ware, e.t.c.
3/ Boot into Knoppix Linux (LiveCD) and sort the partitions according to plan
4/ Install FreeBSD 7.0-Release and boot into it
5/ NFS mount the setup data from the file server (Vectra) and copy it to a shared FAT32 partition on SAL1600 (games machine).
6/ Boot into Windows XP MCE and install SP3
7/ Reboot and configure core system elements (e.g. get her on the network, behind a firewall, and setup the environment)
8/ Install software in the predefined order into the predefined locations, making adjustments as needed.
10/ Restore data from backups
11/ Customize her to the hilt: full command line environment; development tools, dual-monitors, desktop layout, etc.
XP is almost up to 40% already,so hopefully I can get started on the real work soon. Reinstall is easy, getting a working PC is a diff’rent story. So far everything is going smooth, and is probably planned out as good as a NASA mission ;-). Hehe, I’ve even got many of the firewall settings already prepaired. Hmm, I guess it is just fun to rip stuff apart and put it back together a better way at times.
I hope to have SAL1600 back online before morning, and with luck time to post a advance notice of training ops on TG#1… I’d like to reserve the server for a change if I can lol.
Hmm, haven’t heard this song in awhile, but somehow I find it oddly appropriate of late…
You walk on like a woman in suffering
Won’t even bother now to tell me why
You come alone, letting all of us savor the moment
Leaving me broken another time
You come on like a bloodstained hurricane
Leave me alone, let me be this time
You carry on like a holy man pushing redemption
I don’t want to mention, the reason I knowThat I am stricken and can’t let you go
When the heart is cold, there’s no hope, and we know
That I am crippled by all that you’ve done
Into the abyss will I runYou don’t know what your power has done to me
I want to know if I’ll heal inside
I can’t go on with a holocaust about to happen
Seeing you laughing another time
You’ll never know why your face has haunted me
My very soul has to bleed this time
Another hole in the wall of my inner defenses
Leaving me breathless, the reason I knowThat I am stricken and can’t let you go
When the heart is cold, there’s no hope, and we know
That I am crippled by all that you’ve done
Into the abyss will I runInto the abyss will I run
You walk on like a woman in suffering
Won’t even bother now to tell me why
You come alone, letting all of us savor the moment
Leaving me broken another time
You come on like a bloodstained hurricane
Leave me alone, let me be this time
You carry on like a holy man pushing redemption
I don’t want to mention, the reason I knowThat I am stricken and can’t let you go
When the heart is cold, there’s no hope, and we know
That I am crippled by all that you’ve done
Into the abyss will I runInto the abyss will I run
I can’t let you go
Yes I am stricken and can’t let you go— Stricken, Disturbed
I’ve been prepping my destop for a reformat, including taking backups and prepairing software for reinstallation.
After presenting the choice of, A/ either I finish this or B/ I’m not going to work tomorrow until _after_ it is done; has finally cut the “!@#$%ing go to bed” shoutings to a more subdued amount. I can’t stand being told when to go to bed, not by someone that does not know my body the way I do, and has such disregard for the amount of shit I need to get done, plus:
If you’re going to help make my life hell, I’m not gonna be obligated to listen too a damn thing you say.
I’ve got almost 5gb of files; mostly installers, on the way to my file server. Basically everything from Abiword to zip.exe is laid out and ready for installation. So with luck, I can reformat the piece of shit… Setup a quick dual boot, mount the backups and copy them over to a FAT32 partition; install my drivers, install SP3, install my software, and setup the system. I’ve also taken the liberty of making a few change: more development tools and TeX Live 2007 for the type setting environment. I usually try to avoid compiling anything from source under Windows, like the plague. In my opinion, it really is that much of a pain in the ass… I do however like the toolchains around for my own use.
Under unix based systems, I don’t mind compiling from source as long as I’m given something *decent* to work with. Like something that actually builds on a standard system without mucking with it, rather then a piece of crap that is only easy to build on the developers Foo Linux machine lol.
I need to fetch my XP disks, mouse driver disk, and wifi driver disk. But all in all, it shouldn’t be to bad to carry this out. Just that it will probably take 6-8 hours and over a dozen reboots…. Oh man, how I love FreeBSD — a reboot typically means a new kernel to boot from. Much less then that, and I’ve never had to reboot my systems (with the exception of one sound driver that needs to be in loader.conf)
Tomorrow is likely to be another day of … Hmm, I can’t actually think of a word for it, that doesn’t stretch into multi-word profanities. But at least I *should* get off work at a decent hour. Today, I ended up leaving around ~1600Q or so. I can’t stand my life, but there isn’t a lot I can do to change it.
Since I’m not about to keel over and die, and resulting to quite drastic measures is further then I’m willing to go.
I’d love to murderlize them….. Rend’em limb from limb as they do my mind. Or in the immortal words of the Robot, ‘Crush, Kill, Destroy!’ But I can’t bring my self to it… I know it’s wrong…
*joke* Now if only I could find a hit man to do it for me. *joke*
Sometimes, I really wish I could let myself be cruel…. And threat people as they deserve without pity or remorse, destroy them bit by bit and let them rest in a hell of there own making.
My only relief from this hell hole, will be getting dragged out to work, and pushed into another hell on earth, until returning to this one.
while work to do:
Sit and work --> all hell breaks loose
destroy(progress)
Sit and do nothing --> everyone stops going nuts
work to do += 1
;; loop forever in hell.
end
It’s become so painfully clear that I’m not going to get anything done today. In more ways then one, let us say…. I have managed however to end up on my laptop, on battery power, and in one hell of an uncomfortable typing position! Like normal, when I’m on battery power;I operate in text mode.
I don’t care much for it’s forms handling on this scale in Lynx, but I quite like that LiveJournal really is Lynx friendly!
I’ve been writing in Vim as usual, my ~/Documents/Personal/ folder grows day by day, the only semblence of order being YYYY-MM-DD.txt appended to file names. Often when I’m miserable or have very strong feelings, I’ll sit and write if I can (unobserved). It is more relaxing then sitting quietly and letting my mind rage about in silence. In away, I blame it on my time in Bible Study. When I was ‘free’ enough of schedule to attend it, I did quite enjoy being apart of one of the local groups. During most of the 2~3 years I was around, the focus often rested on a King of Israel with the ability for expression. I remember we covered much of the time of David.
I really miss that, but my life just doesn’t have the free time for it. It as always a bit of a hassle to complete each cycle, and at times pushed my abilities to refrain from nervisness; it was also a lot of fun. Hmmm, maybe someday I’ll live to see it again.
As to my own writings, while it is far from being so wonderfuly composed. It does however, express what _I_ feel more clearly then anything else. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t bother adding another file to my home directory. In a lot of ways, I find English a poor language for such a purpose. English is well suited for precision of description in my opinion, but sorely lacking in many other regards…. Mmm, not really looking forward to tomorrow, anyway you slice it, it’s rather likely to be a day I would rather forget about. At least *hopefully* I’ll have the weekend free; my mind wonders so much as I sit here, brain a drift with only my nimble fingers as its output. Hmm, why does everything seem to be I/O bound, even in the 21st century >_>
A tad annoyed, been doing some of my private training in RvS. My times are almost a minute longer then my best, while that’s still quite quick (I set the time marker for 5min; and completed it in less then 3:45) it’s still very slow… I’ve always chose that map because of the extreme CQB. Did a couple good runs and even got time to bring out a variety of weapons: MP5/10A2, MP5A4, TMP, P90, Mac 9/11, and the MTAR-21. But I’m still very far from satisfied with my performance. I fear, that I am starting to get old :
Two things that really pissed me off, the P90 and my faithful P228 pistol. It’s like, you fire off a burst into an area the size of a mouth, the target is chest sized, so close that if it was real life, you could almost extend your arms and bayonet the S.O.B. But in RvS, it’s still possible to fire in bursts, watching the count of rounds fired increase: 2..4..7.. and guess what? Magically all of the bullets strike the wall behind the X-Ray, but none actually hit them… Leaving you with 44 rounds in a P90 and a dead body, that is not the enemy!!!
It’s total bullshit. Although, I must admit in RvS, the game has always given me a feeling that the rear sights are on target, while the front sights are aimed at your toes instead… Tonight was an unbelievably bad display on RvS’s part, I’ve never considered the games P90 to be deead on balls accurate but this was just a joke. I’ve picked off head-shots at range with the games Mac 9/11, and the P90 is dozens of times more accurate in that game.
The second thing to piss me off, is I shot an X-Ray square in the chest with a P228, 9x19mm Jacket Hollow Point round… Round penetrated and exploded the barrel behind him. While the JHP are still capable of penetrating tangos. I can’t help but wonder, why a 9x19mm JHP round from a P228 will do the trick, when a FMJ 9x19mm round from my MP5A4 wouldn’t.
What irks me even more so, for “training games” we used to round people up, go find explosive barrels, and take turns shooting them. Walk up to the barrel, fire a round (or two), and run off before the next Rct tries it. Often we use the 5.7mm AP Army (FN Five-Seven) because RvS gives it less stopping power then some SPITBALL from Romania! We’ve also tested with 5.56x45mm weapons and various 9x19mm pistols using full metal jacket rounds.
The concept that a P228 firing 9x19mm JHP can be more dentimental to a (thick skinned!) explosive barrels contents then the G36K’s 5.56x45mm round, just begs for a physicist to explain these ballistics >_>
Geeze, why can’t they ever make a *decent* tactical game that is realistic?
HOme from work at least and some good news, I only have to work 2 jobs tomorrow instead of 3… One of our clients had her baby today, so there is more important stuff to worry about ;-). Both mother and child doing well as to everyones prayers.
For me this is doubly good news…. If work was a river, I would be drowning in it, and my family would be pushing my head under.
I didn’t really mind having 3 jobs planned for tomorrow, I usually only have to deal with one. What does piss me off, is when I got into this business… It was to help pay for my high school and save some cash for later. Fast forward several years, I could be almost out of college by now instead of still in HS, and she ain’t saved a cotton pickin’ dime along the way. And the only way I’ll likely ever get out of this business, is my life turned up side down, in ways I don’t want lol.