Today is Veteran’s Day, nee Armistice Day, the 91st anniversary of the end of World War I, the war that was supposed to end them all but of course did nothing of the sort. Now the holiday commemorates the veterans of all of America’s wars. Unlike Memorial Day, which honors the fallen, I think Veteran’s Day is for both the living and the dead, for while the dead have paid the ultimate price, the living pay a price as well.
From the Onion, a true simulation of the hell of battle:
Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks
This doesn't usually end well
Demon’s Souls is a PS3-exclusive game that revolves around your death. Your first death comes about ten minutes into the game after a perfunctory tutorial level (in a Hopeless Boss Fight moment), after which you are revived in “Soul Form” to battle the demons infesting the unfortunately-named kingdom of Boletaria. Alternating between Soul Form and Living Body Form is the core mechanic of the game and sets the stage for much of the game’s tension, since while you are in Soul Form your hit points and attack power are both reduced, so you want to be a Living Body most of the time. However, you have to earn the right to your body in a number of ways: by killing a major demon, by helping somebody else kill a major demon, or by killing another player who is in Body Form.
For some reason, I expected that my upcoming Army vacation – Basic Non-Commissioned Officer’s Course (BNCOC) Phase 2 – would be more or less a reprise of my last few Army schools. Going to class every day, doing a little Army stuff here and there, but mostly left to our own devices. Sure, being at Fort Gordon for 12-16 weeks sucks, but I figured at least I could do a little off-season bike riding and catch up on my video games, reading, and drumming.
Then I made the mistake of watching this video on Youtube:
It’s a slideshow from a BNCOC class from 2008, but I assume the setup is pretty much the same. Waking up at 0430, PT every day, class, followed by 2 hours (!) of cleanup details, plus what I assume to be CQ duty at Signal Regiment HQ. As I watched, I shaded from despair to righteous anger. I’m an E-6 in the United States Army! The National Guard! The Signal Corps, for God’s sake! We’re supposed to be the smart ones! I’m going to have to buff floors and clean the chrome corner-protectors on the walls at a headquarters building, at the ripe old age of 30? I didn’t go warrant officer in an attempt to avoid this exact type of ass-hattery, and yet, here we go! And a six-day FTX tacked on to the end? “Cover me while I program this router!”
I calmed down considerably today, and realized that for the majority of the class (who will be active duty soldiers), this type of activity will be more familiar. In fact, for them, it may be a vacation of sorts. For this National Guard Signal soldier, though, it’ll be a return to the strict structure of the “real Army” that I thought I’d never see again, a structure that quite frankly doesn’t exist in the Guard (at least, not around here).
Windows 7 is out, and it represents the first time I’ve been more than casually interested in an OS release since, well, ever. Part of my interest is because I got a new computer to run it – a Sager NP8662 – but also because I think it’s a great break from the crusty past of Windows XP. XP was (is) not a bad OS per se, but being an outgrowth of the NT/Win2000 tech base with the interface conventions of a latter-day Win98, it always seemed something of a chimera to me.
Windows Vista was rightly criticized for sucking generally, but I think it represented a necessary shift away from XP. Just as Windows 95 broke with the past of Windows 3.1 and introduced Windows users to the Start menu, the taskbar, preemptive multitasking, and many of the GUI conventions we still use today, Vista introduced technologies that are just as different from XP’s. A much better graphical installer, superior enterprise deployment capabilities, better plug-and-play support, and most importantly (IMO), a completely redesigned window manager. XP’s window manager (the part of the OS that draws the windows on your screen) is basically a direct lineal descendant of the one used in Windows 2.0 (!), which means that its capabilities were much more limited than window managers used by other modern OSes, like OS X. Vista brought an all-new window manager, which seems like it’s only good for shiny crap like Aero Glass, but really enables much greater performance (through GPU acceleration), stability (window contents still exist when hidden behind other windows!), and resource efficiency.
(For more about the differences between the window managers of XP and Vista, see Wikipedia’s articles on stacking and compositing window managers, respectively.)
Windows 7 refines the new technology introduced in Vista, and does away with the majority of its annoyances. User Access Control (UAC), Vista’s nanny feature extraordinaire (are you sure you want to click that? are you really sure? really really?), is still present, but greatly toned down – it only bugs you when installing software, not every time you open the goddamn Device Manager. Performance is better (I can’t say how much, since I never used Vista at home, only at work, where the massive pile of Army-mandated software turns the fastest computer into an absolute dog), and most of the confusing verbiage of the Vista interface has been cleaned up. I was going to write that they still don’t have a keyboard shortcut for a new folder – my most wanted feature from OS X, by far – but holy shit, they do! My prayers have been answered! (It’s Shift-Ctrl-F, by the way, just like OS X…)
I was going to say a few words about my hatred for Mac evangelism, but that’s a rant best left for its own topic. Suffice it to say, I can stand Macs (even like a few things that they do better than PCs), but I can hardly stand most people who use them.
12 October 2009
I can’t remember the last time it snowed this early. Just a few years ago, we had winters with almost no snow. Now, winter starts before the stores even get their Christmas decorations up!
Just returned from the annual fall trip – this time, to the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota. This time, we brought my parents and their shiny new camper trailer. Would’ve been fine except for the blown radiator hose…
Photos here. Note the tragically misspelled biking sign – “peddle” to new heights? Really? Did no one catch that? Obviously not…also note the continued sightings of the rare jackalope – in its natural habitat!
This passage from the novel I’m currently reading (The Last Centurion, by John Ringo) reminded me of my last post (the narrator is a US Army captain):
“Captain Bandit Six. What’s it like in Iran?”
“Our mission is to maintain and secure.”
“Have you had any problems?”
“We have rectified all our action issues with transformational deconfliction.”
(That one I remember. What a classic. I saw it one time on a poster and nearly shit myself.)
Refugees?
Adjusted with transformational synergy. (I think. Something like that.)
…
We were deconflicting and transforming faster than a battle-bot. We were synergizing and action-iteming like a couple of water beetles in mating season. We were defenestrating obstructors at one point, I think.
I’ll have to remember that last one.
“Words are our weapons,” a battalion commander told his staff at an exercise last winter. It’s true – officers deal mostly with words, and without skillful writing, an officer is about as useful as an infantry team leader who can’t shoot straight. Thus my dismay when one of the officers here asked me to proofread this ball of mush:
JFHQ is leveraging the expertise of its individuals as organizations through
Knowledge Management. The insights and experience of the organization are
represented, distributed, and adopted throughout the entire organization.
This process will be identified and published to enable the subordinate
organizations to benefit from relevant insights and ideas that support the
organizations strategic and individual action plans. Managing this
intellectual capital and intellectual assets will aid in the development and
provisioning to achieve shorter product/service development cycle while
maintaining high standards of quality.
As far as I can tell, the paragraph above doesn’t actually say anything – it’s textbook bureaucrat-ese. I chopped it down and tried to tactfully say that it was “a little dense” and that I tried to “revise for clarity.” I would’ve rather put a big red X through the whole thing and said “do it over!,” but…
Synopsis (with spoilers) and review below the cut.
