High speed, low drag

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Hmmm, an interesting plan.

             4 Man Element (Alpha)
 Red Team (#1, #2) -- Blue Team (#3, #4)

#2 would be EL and #4 the next in command, EL is the senior & while Blue is out of his sight, #4 will call the shots needed to complete the team.

Red Library Offices

special: Rasa Room Clearing Challenge (RRCC), so shoot tangos on sight. Skip securing civlians and weapons, at least 2/3 of Element must live. Map is ‘Clear’ when all areas have been secured.

Spawn: Front entrance

Gear: at least 6 Flashbang and 1 Wedge recomended.

Element: Clear the insertion zone,

Red Team: move out into the large room, keep to the right for cover (from upper level) & bang over the wall. Secure the AoR and head into the hallway system.

Blue Team: move into the hallsystem, secure bathrooms, wedge level 4 door, top of side 1 stairs and return to hallsystem.

Element: Use the side 4 stairs (level 2 door) to accend to the server room (level 3). Stack up, shotgun bang & clear the initial room — getting the FB as far in as possible to the 12 o’clock. Clear and secure initial room.

Red Team: Secure sever area (two rooms) and head via current stair well to the level 4 entry (side 3 stairs).

Blue Team: Fall back, head down to the garage (level 1) via current stair well (side 3), secure area. Then head to Level 4, entry from Side 3 stairs.

Element: Stand by, Column Stack (Red left of door, Blue Right of door). Button hooked entry (grenade optional).

Red Team: Button hook (left) continue to clear the area, secure all rooms in said area of responsiblity (2 rooms) using Flashbangs.

Blue Team: Button hook (right) continue to clear area, secure all rooms in said area of responsiblity (2 rooms).

The Element is ONE team, yet when peiricing the enemy is not possible. We strike with the left and right hand, crushing the enemies stronghold.

EL takes control of the Red Team, His XO takes charge of the Blue Team. The EL is in overrall command. They strike together, yet the strike sperately. A very fulid flow of command & control would be necessary and a great amount of pre-planning would adopt for speed.

With the kind of set up I have planned…. And 4 good [SAS] Operators, that map would be clear pretty dang quick and professionally. Each team would have a set of AoR, in the front Red has the Office, Blue the Hallway. In the server room they strike togther, yet Blue breaks off to clear the garage as Red secures the adjacent rooms. They regroup and strike at the top floor. One team to clear one side of it. Every one should operate under the idea that they have got to clear these sectors within approx 30 seconds.

Keep a fast, agressive pace, utilize pre-planned actions while commanders adopt to what can hit the fan. Good solid team work and a well developed Command & Control implementation.

Result? One Element, and a bunch of tangos that will never know what the heck hit them!

PC-BSD v1.4 Beta Review

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About me:

I am TerryP, I have been using PC-BSD since the days of the 1.0 Release Candidate #1. I’ve also dealt with FreeBSD 6.x, NetBSD 3.x, OpenBSD 4.x, Debian 3.x, Slackware 10.x/11.x, Ubuntu 6.x, MS-DOS 2.x, and Windows 9x/NT systems over the years. But my main computer usage is centred around PC-BSD and OpenBSD systems. The Windows machine for gaming aside 8=)

I’m an avid computer learner and have been around the PC-BSD Support forums often. Up until recent months I was perhaps the most active member of the forum. Both offering what help and advice I could and putting in my two-cents in the language and feature requests when ever possible. I have contributed a handful of PBI to www.pbidir.com, most of which I no longer maintain due to ‘personal’ issues related to PC-BSD and PBI development. And occasionally I submit new ones when I see a request (such as the Marvel-Yukon driver) and try to get them perfected as my free time allows.

Computer Science / Programming and related issues are among my most common avenues of study. I receive no credit (piss on high school !!) but get to learn much when I’m off work. Thus poking around UNIX systems is a lot of fun for me, both at the perspective of Joe User, having to Admin the bastard, and trying to understand the code involved. I’ve been using computers since the early 1990’s in one form or another and discovered BSD in late 2005 / early 2006. Since then its been a wonderful time learning every thing I can get my head around.

The Review: PC-BSD version 1.4 Beta

I Downloaded both CD’s with wxDownloadFast using the Metalink feature… bloody fast compared to the usual FTP methods.

Booted Disk 1 without a problem. Instead of being prompted with the old ncurses dialog script, it went straight for the installer. The old script is in /root/ as PCBSDUtil.sh if I recall the filename correctly. Could come in handy but one can do it any way without the script if you know to use a shell.

The installer asked me for a System Language, Keyboard Layout, Timezone plus checkboxes for syncing with NTP (Time) servers and submitting data to bsdstats. No reason not to, all BSD Stats does is tell them non traceable information, like OpenBSD Machine w/ CPU ?, RAM ?, e.t.c. located in ‘country’ that kinda stuff.

Default settings was for US English language & Keyboard, a safe default in computing since you don’t need a mouse to change the keyboard layout. Assuming your rat works ^_^
Time zone was set for California, LA which is oddly appropriate considering this is an Operating System based on the Berkley Software Distribution originally developed at UCB (University of California, Berkeley). Still no apparent way to set the bloody TZ to Zulu time (Universal Time Coordinated), to do that I usually set it in my shells RC files. I opted to go with a New York time zone since its the same as mine as well as bsdstats and ntpd.

I had to accept three End User License Agreements with one ‘I agree’ button. The BSD style License used by PC-BSD plus the licenses imposed by the Intel Firmware and nVidia drivers included with the Beta. I expect in future versions of PC-BSD some day we will see Adobe Flashplayer make a pop in here, should the bloody thing ever become stable. Maybe even a Realplayer one should it ever be fully ported to FreeBSD (rather then using the Linux ABI).

I was then prompted to set up the user accounts for the system, providing an administrator (root) password and adding at least one user. Since my standard root password at the moment is pretty strong, it contains more then A-Za-Z0-9 it warned me that it ‘normally’ can only contain regular alpha-numeric charactors. Then I added my normal user, tested my old password which was week. But required non AN char’s, it wouldn’t let me use it so I used another. Unchecked the box to ‘autologin’ the first/top user account added. However I could not continue without setting a weeker root password because of the limitations on allowed charactors. So I set it to ‘root’, ha! I know why this is done but I still think it should be allowed once you know the language and keyboard layout used. It saves on having to run passwd or the GUI tools later.. Oh well most people would probably pick a password that would pass through it on the first try 8=)

Next phase was setting up the disk, I only have one disk (/dev/ad0) and a PC-BSD v1.3 Beta or RC in the third slice, so I installed into /dev/ad0s3 with the following setup:

Mount          Size (MB)          Type
/              17137              UFS
Swap           4096               SWAP
/home          20480              UFS
/var           256                UFS
/usr           40960              UFS

It prompted me that /home was a symlink to /usr/home and the link would be adjusted correctly… Which I am happy for !!! In older versions of KDE having /home on a different slice was a problem, I’ve no time to test this at the moment but will in the future. Its never had a problem with it being its own (bsd) partition through. I opted for encrypted swap space but did not set a /tmp yet. Because I didn’t know if PC-BSD had kept the annoying tmpmfs. Looking in /etc/rc.conf I see it is still insufficient, tmpfs is set with a size of 800m. This should be set during installation based on the amount of installed memory. In the past (e.g. <= PC-BSDv1.3) there has been problems. That if you require placing 'huge' files in /tmp, as is the case when using ark to unpack, say huge backup files onto a mounted disk. It goes tits up and runs out of /tmp space. It is *supposed* to be backed up by the hard disk but never seems to work that way. So much for telling people and hearing that it needs to be corrected. Then shouting loudly at them for not doing, since its still ignored. Given the option to install stuff from Disk Two, I selected the KDE SDK and KOffice packages, plus the FreeBSD Source Code. KDevelop gives them a very featureful IDE ready to go for C++ work, looks like it might even have integration with the valgrind profiler. I'm sure theres plug ins for other languages but they seem to be missing as far as starting new projects from the GUI are concerned. If I had to go with a traditional IDE, it would be Visual Studio but I hate Microsoft's compiler (I'm more into C then C++). I thunk I selected to install the FreeBSD source code I see /usr/src is empty but forgot to. Popping in CD2 after the first boot, I got the old automount prompt which is nice, thank you HAL. I also see on the disk that theres a ports tree on it too. I can install them later or download more recent ones.

The usual software is installed and a full list can be found here. Its still a pretty standard KDE system but its a little lighter then PC-BSDs older releases. Yet you can still install the stuff thats missing and more from CD2.

Support for Linux Binaries is on by default, as is cups (printing), samba (SMB file/print shares), powerd (for laptop power management), hal/polkit (HAL daemons to appease KDE), NTP & BSDStats since I opted into it during install, PF the OpenBSD Packet Filter / Firewall. Also the SSH server Daemon (a secure remote login), USB Daemon (you really want this), The Device State Change Daemon / Devfs, and a Console driver for the mouse… So you can use the mouse on a Virtual Console.

After logging in with my user account I was told to set up my graphics card. The default was suitable, 1024×768@60hz. It also went up all the way to 7680×4800@95hz. I had to chose ‘intelligent’ answers my self. I also picked the latest nVidia drivers. System works but the max refresh rates the LOWest supported for my resolution as far as Windows XP SP2 is concerned with much older nVidia drivers. Needless to say, my eyes are uncomfortable. when using my preferred resolution on this monitor (1600×1200).

The users home directories still have Document, Image, Music, and Video folders but no sample content. This has always been lacking since these were added. Not essential but always a ‘nice touch’. With most PC’s setup with Windows XP, you usually find a handful of sample pictures and a sample track or two for Windows Media Player.

Less needed stuff like Games and Toys have been moved to Disk 2, so the clutter after boot is a lot less. Yet you can install stuff you may want from disk 2. Like other languages (many choices), KDE based Office, Development, Educational, Games&Toy based packages. Also PBI’s for Firefox 2.0.0.3, K3B 1.0, OpenOffice 2.1, and Opera 9.2 are on the disk.

dmesg shows both my Audigy 4 (detected as an Audigy 2) and on board AC97 (disabled in BIOS) based sound cards. But reading /dev/sndstat only shows an Audigy 2 installed. I have no sound but the PC’s system bell thingy. This is normal with the emu10k1 driver the system has loaded. I’d need to install the emu10kx driver to get audio with my system.

Networking is fine out of the box no need for setup. Taking a look at the control centre its nice to see that theres a Software & Updates menu where we can add/remove PBI and stuff from Disk 2. Also configure the PC-BSD Online Updater, which is turned off -> Probably because this is a Beta and it won’t have updates to download. Theres also the old never used for much PBI Updater checker/downloader. Sadly you have to login to root 3 times to view all 3 sub-modules. This sucks, imho it should remember it in a more ‘cookie’ like fashion… but that’s a KDE thing I’m sure.

There are now *TWO* service managers, the KDE one (kde components->service manager) and the PC-BSD one (system administration->services manager) these should be merged IMHO. If not literally into one screen then into a tab bar where you can select ‘KDE’ and ‘PC-BSD’ oriented stuff.

Splash screen on boot is off, probably for the beta since its more help to have the messages during testing (imho). Its nice to see that the SMP Kernel was loaded, since I have a Dual Core EM64T Processor.

linux_bas_fc-4_10 provides the Linux Application Binary Interface, Linux xorg, gtk20 runtime, and flashplugin7 packages are also installed into that. Nice to see that not only is there support for ZIP but RAR archives. This is good because you never know when you will encounter an odd .rar or .7z file, to bad theres no 7-Zip support.

The usual GTK+, QT3, and KDE libs are here, C/C++/Python centred development with Perl and Ruby on hand with less tools.

Kaffeine is still the default multimedia player but Amarok is installed (yay!), the existing AllCodecs PBI should work with both. Because Amarok is only setup for the xine engine (which kaffeine uses too).

Its very nice to see the ‘start’ text gone from the K-Menu button and that the menu is staying lean & mean. Icons are pretty basic and a good set for a desktop. Beryl is installed…. so people can have their eye candy and hopefully not shout on the forums “Why won’t feature foo work right with card bar that beryl hates on FreeBSD’ hehe. The tray icon icon is on by default and its very in depth. It looks like its some thing I would like but most of the options at first seem to deal with appearances more so then user interaction. Most stuff of major importance seems there. Maybe I’ll play with Beryl later.

All in all, PC-BSD’s v1.4 Beta looks like a very good overall improvement over the v1.3 Release. Strangely the under the hood FreeBSD system has changed from 6.1-Release to 6.2-Stable, this is the first time I’ve seen PC-BSD use a FreeBSD -Stable instead of -Release. I find it some one supprising but at this point, I would expect 6.2-Stable to provide more then enough.

Theres still room for improvement but I think in a few years they will get it just right. Ether that or it will become Microsoft-BSD (very strange expression….) and by that I mean, a Pain In The Arse to do any thing to. I think through they will make a very fine Desktop System, not very BSD inspired in the end…. but still BSD under the hood. I’m no mind reader so I’ll stop thinking about PC-BSD’s release in the year 2012 lol.

I think when the release is made. I’ll probably take a weekend, to let any major issues blow by before hand. And dump my home directory and configuration files to the winbox (big harddrive) and any thing else I might want to save, like most of the crap I’ve done in /usr/local/[dir]/*. Reformat the drive all together, its about a 60GB one. So maybe a 18GB Recovery/Storage partition plus 40GB for PC-BSD v1.4.

Do a clean install and restore my home directory some where and get things working again. To be perfectly honest, even if the ‘upgrade’ option in the installer is working, I don’t trust it to do the job *right*. And every now and then, because my laptop is a PC-BSD v1.1 install that’s been updated over the releases, I run into occasional issues that only come from updates from older versions. Not new releases. It also seems like /usr/Programs/ is officially ‘the’ place to place the PBI. Because /usr/local/MyPrograms links to it instead of /Programs now, which is still a link to /usr/Programs (which I had to create my self as a symlink to /Programs on my laptop).

I think I’ll get my laptop hooked up with PC-BSD v1.4 Release and ditch all the PBI and just live with traditional software management… less risk of FUBAR”ing my workstation. If I ever get another laptop, it would be a toss up between OpenBSD and PC-BSD for it. I’ve never tried OpenBSD under X11 and why I use PC-BSD these days is mainly because I don’t want to screw with Xorg+KDE on FreeBSD. Compling it on a Sempron 3300+ (2.0Ghz) and 512MB RAM != my idea of fun.
< br />

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http://www.nabber.org/projects/appupdater/

Hmmmmm, I might want to take a look at that later.

Raging Spider

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Ok, so I started installing styles for Kopete. Found one I liked and started making changes to it to fit my screen size. I need to resize an image file for one of my tests.

Since kolourpaint sucks at it just as bad as paint.exe I hopped over to www.pbidir.com and downloaded the latest gimp PBI, a development version. And what do I find !? This bastard PBI has no libraries in its installed directory and tries to run pkg_delete on a bunch of packages it DID NOT install. The way FreeBSDs package mangement works I don’t think it would do any serious harm since its not forcing any uninstalls. But still, its a pile of buffalo pucky — wtf does it need to run that in the first place ??

link

So I logged into the forum for the first time in a long while. And lodged a compliant as directed by the website.

I’ve lived with the idea that getting a PBI made, approved, and hosted is a pretty slack-jawed yokel of a process. But for the love of petes grandma — at least audit the fucking thing before you give it your ‘blessing’ of approval.

Some day if I ever make another PBI, I think I’ll give a pop up during install.

“Erasing all files on your hard drive — the drive will self destruct in 13 seconds”

Then give another pop up after a few seconds:

“Just kidding, this was just a test to see if you’re doing your job!”

And see if any one gets scarred lol without causing any harm to their PC.

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Ahh home from work and waiting on dinner.

Time for a quick game or three. I’m stuck working an extra two runs every day & on the weekend but their short, maybe 30 min each. Just have to let the two dogs out, feed’em, feed the fish, and RTB (Return To Base).

Lovely place… about as close to out in the country as you can get. Without having a long drive to go any where. Most places out this way are in or near town. But out there, man the lands beautiful. I’d love some day to live out in the country, with the usual techologies of course (PC’s + Broadbanned). I’ve always been in apartments since I was little… So maybe thats it, unless being born in the South has some thing to do with it. One thing I do like about where we live, its in that sweet spot. Where you get heavy weather but not to much damage (usually). Yet you can drive out and within 10-15 miles you can basically go any where. In to town, round the major centres of business or towards the country.

Only trick is its about 30 Miles to Atlanta and the traffic makes it a couple hours drive. I’d love to visit a big city like NYC to see what its like but I wouldn’t want to live in a City, just not my bag.

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Today I’m getting back to work on my primary goal. Seeing to the completion of the SOP Rewrites/Updates.

GCHQ has the final say and will probably have plenty to say about it (if I get demoted to Recruit, you know why :-P). But before that, I want to get it set up for the SNCO’s to review.

So I’m screening through it section by section marking them as ‘ready for snco review’. Once we’re done, we can let the SNCO’s review things. When we’re done with what ever that tells us. Then we fix it up and pass the buck to GCHQ.

Thats where I’ll probably need a stiff drink or a room to pace in.

Also to day I want to start working on some changes to the Room Clearing sections. Notes about dealing with rooms where the idea of going opposite the dork infront of you won’t work. I remember seeing a Video of the IDF Training, and dealing with the same situation. And I’ve seen us pop into the same online often enough.

I’m happy enough if Potential Recruits break PoD/AoR selection down to going opposite the man infront of you. And if Recruits and young troopers develop what I call the “Four Corners Syndrome”. i.e. they think the PoD’s are getting to the four corners of the room. Which actually…. I think thats how I was trained as a Recruit. Its ok with me if thats how they start out, its better then a lot of other things I’ve seen.

But I expect them to evolve past it, learning concepts about the lines of fire, reading the room, improvising to the situation at hand. Selecting good PoD’s and not setting up a crossfire with friendlies with them being the ones getting shot e.t.c.

I really like the diagrams from the United States Army Field Manual 3-06.11, Chapter 3, Section III (Clearing), 3-22.

First mans entry

#1 Goes in

Second mans entry

#2 Goes in

Third mans entry

#3 Goes in

Fourth mans entry

#4 Goes in

And theres one that shows some good adoptions of its final Points of Domination.
Points of domination and sectors of fire

Thats basically how we do it in the [SAS] too. But thers some rooms where thats not a real possiblity. While I wouldn’t expect a Recruit to be perfect, I would expect Troopers to learn to adopt as they gain expirence. What Rasa and I have in mind, might be more suitable to LCpl / Cpl ‘s but I think it is important enough to include it within the SOP’s. Less it be forgotton and people end up bumping into each other in room clearing and wonder why the heck they shot each other by mistake 8=)

You know… I could be spending my Saturday gaming all day before I have to stop at work. But blasting Country Music and working on the SOP’s over lunch works fine by me for today. Keeps my mind occupided and curtails boredom even if its not chill’n on TG#1 & TG#3.

My family really makes it hard to concentrate on my work…..

I wish the local park had free Wifi and A/C Power…. lol Then I could work from there with my laptop.

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Hmm, got to see some thing refreshing, a western where they actually used sound tactics. Leapfrogging, stealth movement, the ‘Tin can on a fense post quick draw’ drill, and some proper room clearing techniques in their basic form. Not bad for a simple Western, probably made in the 1960s.

Also got to catch most of Hackers, movies as fake as a 80’s action flick but just as entertaining. It’s after 0600Z, thats like 2am local time… and I just get back to the PC.

You know, I really should stop tying with 10 fingers! I can type about as fast as I can think the words…. It’s quite fast when its my thoughts and not just reiterating some thing else. On typing tests I usually score about 70 some words per minute. In general work, I can type English very fast if I’m not one eye on the ‘original’ text. With how much time I spend on the computer I guess you kind of learn to type quickly when talking… eh chatting, posting what ever.

If I don’t do it quickly, by the time I finish a five minute post… Like an hour has gone by because of being interrupted / sent AFK e.t.c. So I learned to type FAST when I have some thing to say.

Hell

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For as long as I can remember, Thursday has been a monster day of the week ever since I started working.

While we were working upstairs I heard a commotion below. Macy (one of the bosses dogs) was having trouble walking. It was like she couldn’t flex or was trying not to flex her rear starboard leg. When she fell over I thought it might’ve been broken because she couldn’t get up at first.

I fetched the phone so Ma could call the vet… Macy fell over and started to lose control of herself, I thought it was fear of not being able to get up. She was able to get upright and running again…

By the time we got to Kira and the Vet, Macy was all ready spread out on the deck. Having a seizure of some sort. Locked our dogs in the bedroom upstairs so they wouldn’t get in trouble while we rushed her to the vet.

Macy was about 45-50lbs (20+ kg), basically just a Mutt. A bit of pit and chow in the mix I think. Beautiful dog, red’rusty fur and a very sweet temperament., The kind of dog that just sits on you and licks the skin off your face.

Heart beat was rapid during the trip but she couldn’t really control her locomotive functions, she went stiff as a board… mouth clenched shut, eyes following shortly. A short while bit she went slack… no heart beat but my own beating in my ears.

She basically died in my arms half way to the vet. We have no bloody idea what the PhL|©|< caused it. Wasn't us though, the chemicals and supplies we bring to work are kept far away from the dogs. And we(/I) are nearly pathologically paranoid about making sure they don't get into any thing they shouldn't.
Cause of death.. I’d guess would be shock followed by the heart giving out but I’m no doctor. And what started it is beyond me. There was nothing we could do other then rush her to the vet, at best if we had more information before hand. We might’ve been able to wrap her up and roll out faster but its to late.

This is the second time I’ve seen some one I care for die in front of me. It may have been a Dog but its still a living creature. This makes me hug our own dogs all the more tighter….

Memory lane

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Booted up SWAT3 just for the heck of it and tried brentwood.

Made sure every thing was set up right.

You know its harder then I remember ! But all the more fun training on it again.

My first run at the insertion, I was mirroring the back window. Had visual contact on a suspect facing away. I swapped to my MP5A3 — while still standing near the window, the blinds for concealment.

Sure enough the suspect turned around and shot me through the blinds when he heard the rustle of metal and plastic ! Now THAT is a smart tango. Later when I turned on the [SAS] Realism Mod. Suspects started to hunt for me and try to attack after they knew I was there. But with an HK53 there was a bit less gap between our armourment then with the 9x19mm Cartridge of the MP5.

Hmmm, time to get training again xD

Days log

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While the automatic update between Netscape Navigator 9.0b1 and 9.0b2 was not so automatic on my laptop, it was still painless. Just had to download the Linux tarball and unpack it. I saved it to /tmp as I usually do when I download files I’m not going to need much.

Dixie# cd /usr/compat/linux/opt/
Dixie# ls
navigator
Dixie# mv navigator navigator_9.0b1
Dixie# tar -xzf /tmp/netscape-navigator-9.0b2.tar.gz
Dixie# ls
navigator       navigator_9.0b1
Dixie# rm -rf navigator_9.0b1/

Even took a backup of the install just in case.

Today we got to meet to new dogs and a nice family. We’ll be taking care of the dogs while they’re on vacation.. and financially thats a pretty good thing for us.

Managed to launch part of my continuation training today. Was just Hellfish, Duke, and Me.. Chester and Lake seem to have been lost in the reboot. For the most part we failed the missions, although all but one was completed….. We went into over time on all but 1 and the other, was neutral. We had met the conditions before time was up but didn’t know it till 40 seconds later.

We did pretty good if you ask me. Because when I sat down and made the list of scenarios. I had plotted the times figuring on 6-8 players. And trying to find a flexible border between the impossible and the possible. Well, I had planned there to be a fairly good sized [SAS] presense and some good applicants. On one mission we went just a wee bit over. But I know if we had two 4-man Elements and proper pre planning. We would’ve taken the mission in half the required time.

With just 3 people I didn’t really expect to complete any successfully. But I think it showed Duke and Hellfish a bit more about me. You see, when I was young and had time to train myself harder. Well I still do, just not as often as I’d like.

I set high goals to obtain, make the as good as impossible or highly improbable a completed mission. Not always successful… but I would train till I got better, till I could do no better. I remember my own little ‘personal’ one man training sessions in SWAT3. I would set the map to Brentwood residence. Which is a large 3 floor house, back and front lawns swimming pool. With a Den, Bedroom, and Bathroom on Level 1. Kitchen, Family room, Library/office’et, Bathroom (2 rooms), Huge Living/Dinning room, and garage on Level 2. And 4-5 Bedrooms upstairs including 2-3 closets and 2 bathrooms. Huge house, kinda nightmare to clean… lol. Mission was simple, 2 Adults and 3 Children that needed to be evacuated and maybe 5-6 suspects in body armour with light assault weapons holding them hostage.

The [SAS] Record time was like 54-67 seconds or so. 10 Men, no team casualties, every thing pre-planned. Mission complete 100%. My personal training op was to try and break that record. I never succeeded, not once but I learned greatly.

To make things harder on my self, I would take my usual S3 training loadout. A Compact primary for working in close confines. Usually the AKS74U with Kobra sight or if running the [SAS] Realism Mod (which included a large weapon mod). I’d bring my HK53 which used the same sight overlay as the MP5 family (I didn’t like the Aimpoint scopes). I’d load it with a SINGLE magazine of FMJ, pack a pistol with a suppressor. Normally a HK MK23 .45 Cal or HK USP.40 Cal with ONE magazine of JHP loaded. A single CS Gas canister, one Flashbang, and a lone C2 Breaching Charge. And my favorite uniform, the Guardian duds with Navy Blue pattern. Later on I would do it with [SAS] PTE uniform.

To make it even harder, I set the AI to the max and the difficulty to the hardest mode. Level 1, rear poolside entrance. I’d head in stealth to first contact then go dynamic when necessary. Or when I decided a loud tactical aid was just to good to pass up. I’d make use of the Opti-wand when I wanted to be extra cautius, like coming up into the blind hallway on the top floor. Or making entry on the back door, where a Suspect might be lurking on the near by stairs.

I made the level as hard and realistic as I could. Secured the area and even after the game gave me the mission complete. I’d keep going till I had personally cleared every room. After awhile and a lot of getting shot at. My average *best* clear time. Was 1:07, far from my mark but the best I could do. I had learned some valuable lessons and how to ‘rough it’ without good equipment. Later on, I’d learn how to master any weapon in Raven Shield. When I was a bucking recruit, you could hand me a Mac-9/11+SD or SR-2 off the rack and I could put a two-round burst in a tangos head from quite a distance away as fast as I could think fire.

Today, well I’d probably miss by a mile at that range on my first try. Lack of hours in the shoot-house but it was great fun training to my sharpest edge. I looked for the impossible situations and I tried to best them, usually I couldn’t or it would be close. But I would do so and try to walk away the better for having tried.

As a Recruit I had a lot of fun, my typical day consisted of going through the map list like 3 or 4 times. Usually I’d start off in an Element with Rasa and Leon, then end up alone several hours later to keep on going. Being able to complete a mission on my own was not to far off. As a trooper I pushed my self even further then that. Completing a mission on my own was not a problem.. just an inconvenience. After awhile… I got rather bored, what else was their to do? I even started to do less then ‘as perfect as I could get’ things. To make it more challenging — instead of taking the most professional, safest, most effective routes. I would take the most dangerous, insane ones. I learned how to handle them as best as I could. It even got to the point that I thought about leaving the [SAS], boredom set in.

Then some day some body decided to make me an SAS_LCpl_Spidey01. In my opinion I was the worlds biggest failure as a LCpl… Lazy good for nothing bum with often no one to train. Eventually they made me a Cpl, I took it as a second chance. It was during those days that I got to see a lot of close training time (Trp->LCpl->Cpl). Later on I was to become an SSM.. and now I’m the RSM. As I look back on my past, I think Recruit, Corporal, and Squadron Sergeant Major are my favorites. As a Rct I got to learn so much and wanted to help pass it on. As a Cpl, I could work on passing it on and as SSM. My mind started to grow tactically to make up for the slack in my shooting skills. I’m not sure if I enjoy being the RSM more then I did SSM, it’s to early to tell. But right now I find my self situated just where I want to be.

I’m an SNCO and able to help in more business matters that I would like to be of service in. Yet I’m also close enough to the front lines to keep limber and have fun. I don’t really know if theres any one more active then me thats above Cpl. I love the fact, that I’ve trained personally with almost every one in [SAS]. And those that I have not, I’m on familer enough terms with. Like me and Random, we’re not exactly bosom buddies or any thing. But when it comes to server time, we’re not strangers ether. How many people in [SAS] can say the same? I’ve trained with all of the Rct personally, I’ve helped the Troopers during their Recruit time. And I’ve seen many of the NCO grow since pre-rct times. Most of the people who trained me are gone… But those I have trained with know me as Spidey01.

I’m not chained to a desk, yet I’m not glued to the field; It’s awesome. I remember when I was a NCO, my favorite past time was to try and get the younger generation to one up me. If I could do it to Gold Star perfection, I’d try and get them to go for the Platinum one. When ever people have been able to surpass me, I have been very greatly pleased.

I hope some day, to see the outcome. Being a member of the [SAS] has had an impact on my life, for the better in my humble opinion. And I hope it does for others, I found a group of kindred spirits when I stumbled on [SAS] Training Grounds #1 one day. Looking for a smoke-free zone I could play RvS with a realistic frame of mind. I’ve learned much, grown much, and have seen a lot since then. Here is part of my home… And I’m happy enough with it. In years to come maybe the same or similar will shine true for other Members.