My daughter made more money this week than I did. Yeah, I’m still looking, but she’s also been looking. In these times, jobs for high schoolers are taken by folk like me.
She wanted to get something that would feed toward what she wants to be down the road – an engineer. Like I said, times are tough and, well… she decided since that wasn’t happening she’d put her skills down and run with what turned up.
What turned up is that she’s getting money to do artwork. Portraits. What you see below are two things she’s done on commission. She’s working in charcoal. She’s done more, but agreed to put these up for display. If any of you happen to know someone who is interested, have them send me an email and I’ll get them in touch. (She works from pictures, mostly, especially with folk who have trouble sitting for much time at all. That happens to be true in both the items below.)
Most folk are impressed that I was a Ranger. I am proud of that service, but it’s my service as a pathfinder that gives me the biggest personal egoboo. In the mid to late 1980s, there were only a handful of pathfinder detachments. The detachments were about the size of half a platoon. They were very, very hard to get into because they were so few and so relatively unknown. Now I’ll be the first to admit that on a gung-ho fighting level pretty much all the rest of the special operations types were higher on the food chain. But I did more in the 187th than I did anywhere else.
Now one of the things I did was pick up airborne wings from other nations. It’s a reciprocal thing the various friendly airborne units do, and as a rule you get to skip the rest of the school and go straight to jump week — and most of the time you get to skip the spit, polish and sweat of the students. You are, after all, airborne, you’re just meeting more brothers. yeah. Anyway, some of the wings I picked up were in Honduras.
Now the joke of the airborne is the answer to “why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” The answer is, “nobody would, but the air force doesn’t have a perfectly good airplane.” I know, not that funny. Anyway, most air forces use relatively modern aircraft. It was in Honduras that I learned just how accidentally skilled our jumping forefathers were. See, in Honduras they jumped – and still jump, I understand – from C47s. Dakotas. Skytrains. Gooney Birds.
For those who don’t get it, C-47s are what carried our airborne forces over Normandy on D-Day, and throughout the rest of the war. It is a workhorse aircraft, and has a reputation of… Heinlein in Glory Road said it best. “It would get to Singapore on one engine if asked. I knew my luck was in as soon as I saw that grand old collection of masking tape and glue sitting on the field.” I’d read of them numerous times, always with the praise and astonishment at the miracles they pulled of regularly. This week, I got to jump from one.
In most ways, it was the same as any other jump. Oh, there was no inbound row of seats, just a row on each side of the fuselage. One stand up command, no big deal. It’s a bit shorter than the C-130s I’d been from – in fact, a bit shorter than the CH-47. Head room was a bit shorter than the CH-47 as well, though it was just a fuselage ceiling and not a bunch of mysterious pipes and packing running fore to aft. Still, I could stand well enough – I certainly had room given the need to hunch for the shuffle and balance. Shuffle and balance, however, were the first big deal.
I noticed the pleasure when I first boarded. In most modern aircraft the floor has some sort of low-slip or no-slip texture. In these aircraft it was bare metal. At rest, the C-47 rests on a tail wheel and the floor is NOT level. I was mortified at how I was slipping and sliding as I moved up the slope to my spot – but soon noticed I wasn’t the only one with problems.
The floor was just as slick on exiting. At least it was level, and the pilot was very, very good at maintaining stability while the cargo exited. Still, I learned (several times that week) that the airborne shuffle solved a LOT of problems, the biggest making sure your entire stick left in a controlled manner. Nobody fell, but every move felt like I was trying to walk across an icy sidewalk.
The last difference was the door. Remember the ceiling is a bit low, and realize this means the door is as well. I later discovered I hadn’t needed to duck on the way out – barely – but a couple of my teammates did. One said he banged his helmet every single time – at 6-3- that didn’t surprise me.
The bird was hot and cramped. It brought on some degree of claustrophobia after only a few minutes. Slick floors, a headbanger of a door, and utterly reliable. I’ve jumped from a lot of different aircraft (some of which I want to write about later), but this one made me ponder my past – the past of my nation and my (then) profession.
For that reason alone I have a bit of a fondness for the nation of Honduras. Of such things are memories and traditions built.
WE have a pair of sick puppies. No, wrong tense. We HAD a pair of sick puppies. The Vet did the fecal test and it came up PARVO.
I’ve been through this song before, and even if you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars (unemployed, remember?) you’re probably going to lose the puppies. Or at least that’s my past experience.
Last time I went through the game I did research (again), and discovered there was a possible hope. Some vets were experiencing great benefit from Tamiflu. As it happened, along with the other medication (antibacteria for secondaries, anti-emetics, and stuff for hydration) he prescribed Tamiflu.
A week later, a hefty amount of effort, and while more money than I really have available less than I COULD have spent, I have two puppies that are to most appearances healthy. They still sit or sleep a bit more than puppies do, but not by much — and it’s been less so each day for the past couple of days.
I cannot promise it will work for you. The AMVA considers the use of Tamiflu both still under testing AND has other concerns about its use. From my point of view, however… If the Vet hadn’t done the test, then I’d have just suspected a bad flu. We only had a couple of bouts of vomit and diarrhea, and the fever stayed mild (peaking around 103.2 or so for both). Based on this, I’ll recommend you ask your vet about it if you face dogs with Parvo.
Tamiflu. Ask for it by name.
46 inches, and I’m probably done with the easy inches. Oh, I might get another inch over the upcoming week, but it’s more likely to be half an inch. I’m approaching the first plateau.
I’m also exhausted. I’d been doing some things – fortunately as it turned out. See, there’s a dojo opening very, very close to me which happens to be of my school. I’m going to get a financial break in return for teaching. So today I participated in a class.
Looked at objectively it wasn’t that hard. Mostly beginners, we only did some kicks and basic calisthenics – no heavy form-work, no focused calisthenics, no wind drills, just basics. It was a significant step up, however, and an hour and a half did NOT fly by. (Hour and a half? well, I was actually there for a class and a half. Normal class for that level is an hour.)
Assuming something like work doesn’t get involved, this will actually be good for me. Once I’ve started I can maintain self-motivation but it’s just flat easier if I’m doing at least part of it with others.
I plan to do a PT test within a week or so to see if I’ve improved. Oh, I don’t figure to have reached my Big Goals, but I’d like to see some improvement.
Someone asked me why I’m doing my controller for the Xbox 360 instead of, say, the PS3. Two reasons – one practical, one philosophical.
Practical – I own the Xbox 360 but not the PS3. Kinda hard to test for one I don’t have. (There’s a fair chance I’ll get one, of course. I have a PS2 and a Wii. shrug.)
Philosophically, I think there’s a tiny chance the device will sell. If so, I think the XBox market is better. sigh, that needs a bit of breaking out.
There have been more PS3 units sold than Xbox 360s. Counting all registrations, there are more in Nintendo’s group than in Microsoft’s. BUT… Xbox Live has generated over a billion dollars of sales, while Nintendo’s program has gotten less than $200,000. The excuse that Xbox also gets money from the people paying to use the service is poor thinking. How many people will pay if/when Nintendo makes a pay tier? Based on what I’ve read about quality and such – not as many.
Philosophically, I think the cliche “That’s where the money is” applies. (By the way – not said by Willie Sutton. A reporter ‘created’ it as part of an interview.) I don’t really notice my problems when playing against the machine. It’s when I’m facing other players that my frustrations shine (so to speak).
(relevant digression) We got new puppies – rescues. Now the last time we did a rescue, the dog had Parvo. Three days after getting the puppy it was dead. So it’s the day after they’re brought home, and I’ve got two lethargic puppies losing it out both ends and running a fever. It’s not the ugly stuff the other puppy was putting out near the end but I can’t recall the beginning. SO, the family went into intensive mode so we could keep the puppies alive till the vet could see them. PedialightFluids every 20 minutes, Saline solution with a couple of sets of syringes and needles ready for subcutaneous hydration, enema sets ready… And my shift was 11 pm to 7 am.
To finish the digressive introduction, it wasn’t – it was apparently “just” a stomach virus. The puppies are fine.
But over that eight hours – and a bit more, actually – I realized again why one of my projects is a better Xbox 360 controller. Yeah, I got off on the tangent of computer controller, partly for remote use, that I was entangling with the brailler. And that’s still on the table.
But I suck at shooter games even though I enjoy playing them. The reason is I don’t get good control with my thumbs – I find myself yanking the sticks to the stops. It’s awkward. So for big chunks of today I did some work.
I have drafted a schematic and the PIC program. I’ve actually got two drafts on the table – one will give a much smoother response to the tilt-board but I suspect it’ll draw more power. Need to run numbers. For “the deal” – Accelerometer to analog angle conversion is a table lookup, and I need one for each dimension – and I’m going to be adding some stops. I can have a larger memory chip that has three lookup tables OR I can have three separate but smaller chips that do the lookup. Because I’m ‘just’ running wire from the handle to the original spots on the board I don’t need any other chips.
I’ve been researching chips – both ’tilt’ (three-axis accelerometer) and PIC chips – and hope to order a handful this week. I’ve started carving a handle model, but am beginning to think I’ll be better off by cutting apart a pair of squirt guns instead.
I know I’ll probably never get that MMORTS off the ground, but I still do research. One part of that research is trying to figure out what makes MMOs succeed. Now Andrew spotted something that gave me one piece of that puzzle – MMO Data’s Subsription Numbers of MMOs. First let me say MMO Data did a very nice job to include acknowledging and presenting alternative estimates for uncertain data. Few of the MMOs out there give detail. But that’s all a bit of digression.
Last time I discussed this the issue was whether the MMORTS would be “fun”. After thought I realized that “fun” is subjective. All you need is ENOUGH people who think it would be fun and that takes care of that part of the puzzle. I also realized that everyone strives for good or interesting graphics and game engines and… I got seriously curious why World of Warcraft is so much more popular than any of its competitors, many of which solve problems WoW players claim exist. I have a tentative answer:
Accessibility.
No, I don’t mean ability to get the game. I mean ability to play the game. Take a look at the chart Andrew copies. Notice something about the top five. Either they’re new (Aion and Lineage II) or they can be played on computers that were starters three to five years ago. When WoW came out in 2004, in fact, it could be played on a Best Buy Starter from 1999. Barely, I admit, but it could still do that. In comparison, Everquest II (which was supposed to BURY WoW) couldn’t be played on a Best Buy Starter purchased the same time as the game. You had to get a bit more RAM and a bit more Video Card. It wasn’t cutting edge, but it automatically went for a smaller slice of the audience.
It appears a lot of games are built to push the bounds of the computer. It also appears that a lot of Very Popular games have, in addition to that spark that makes them fun, the ability to be played by a wider audience.
As a consequence I’ve got an underlying rule for the MMO. It runs on the starter box (not necessarily the cheapest thing in the store but not too far past it) of the time. Sure, it would be nice to push graphics and processor further, but if you want the world to buy your better mousetrap it’d better be usable by the world.
I just re-read the piece and realized that in light of my current condition the opening is very misleading.
I didn’t get roped into the fat-boy program to participate. The paperwork was one of my joe jobs – all LTs get them as part of on the job training. Napoleon was almost right. The army marches on its stomach. It lives, however, on paperwork. The higher you go the more – and more critical – that paperwork is.
For the inevitable digression, my waist is 47 inches. Yes, I know that’s two inches in four days. I’m not surprised – two things.
First, as I noted before sometimes the waist can be off if there’s gas or something else causing the belly to swell. I lost a bit over an inch on that alone – sorry, should have mentioned it. Second, in my experience the waist always makes big gains early but it has nothing to do with fat loss. Instead, the lazy set of muscles in there are beginning to work again, and that pulls everything in. I suspect I’ll lose another inch or two – maybe three – over the next week and a half. THEN it’ll get hard and discouraging.
I thought I’d play with some of the themes and see if I like one better than what I’ve got. If you happen to log in and really like or dislike one of the tests, let me know.
When I became an ossifer, er, officer, I managed to get roped into what we called the fat-boy program. Now this is usually run by an NCO for enlisteds, but officers do a LOT of paperwork and tend toward seat cushion spread. The upshot of this is that I got a lot of lessons on the subject – and enough contradictions I went and did the research to get things right.
I’m going to share one little thing I ran across that’s a very useful gem for those of us working on getting back where we should be. Make sure you have a timepiece that sounds off every hour on the hour – a watch with a beep, a chiming floor or mantle clock, whatever. When it sounds off, do a short set of exercises. One set of 20 something works while you’re beginning, build it up to a minute or two of sets down the road. Not (quite) enough to build a sweat, but enough you can feel your body recognizing it as exercise.
Here’s the thing – the body is lazy. Yes, when you do your regular 15 minutes to hour and a half of exercise every couple of days your body seriously burns calories. It also continues to burn at an elevated rate for a while after you work out as it works to flush the waste and redistribute nutrients, fluids, and other bodily requirements. But when that’s done your body slooooows down. Burning excess calories when it’s not needed is not usually a survival element – you might need those down the road, and food is scarce. Or so says the hindbrain. It is the hindbrain we’re working on here.
See, it’s harder (not a lot, but a little) for the body to move from sedentary to move fast than it is to move from medium to fast. In fact it’s hard enough that if you can convince your body you need to jump to “hard work” at frequent intervals it’ll just give up and “rest” at a slightly higher rate. Sure, it’s burning more calories, but obviously if you’re having to sprint a lot the body has a better chance of surviving if it’s ready to sprint.
Boy, was that clumsy. Let’s rephrase that. If you bump your caloric burn at frequent intervals, the body will keep the base burn rate a bit higher than it would if you just sit all day. That burn is on top of the actual caloric burn of your short workout.
Bottom line, by doing a bit of serious (though short) work every hour, you’ll increase the burn. It will NOT keep your muscles in top shape. If you’re trying to build massive muscles it’ll work against you. But if the primary goal for the moment is burning off excess calories, it’s a very useful trick.
So every hour on the hour my watch beeps. Gads, I’m getting to hate this thing.
