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newer entries...
02-27-00 war is hell... when's the next one?
02-22-00 now I know how Charlie Brown feels
02-19-00 divided and conquered
02-18-00 shaky and brief
02-14-00 valday update
02-09-00 actually, it only takes one to tango
02-06-00 Boardom
02-05-00 what Sims to be the problem?
02-02-00 two, two, two dates in one
older entries...
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war is hell... when's the next one? |
| 02-27-00 |
I bet I messed up the date on the last entry. Oh well.
Back from the Kansas City road trip and my first airsoft game. My legs feel like I walked the whole way.
The motel had a "business center" (a tiny room with a computer) which David, Eric and Tracy used to surf the Brunching Shuttlecocks site at 1 AM when we had to be up and out at 8:30. Now that's priorities! The place was a bit more expensive than we had hoped, but I roomed with Jeff to split the costs a bit. He doesn't know close he came to being smothered with a pillow to stop the snoring.
 Since none of us had remembered to bring the map and the KC Paintball site is not too obvious from the road, we wound up going about 7 miles too far on this little twisty country road that threaded between farms and lakes. It looks like a straight line on the map, but don't let that fool you. We were suspicious that we'd missed it, which was confirmed when the road ran out. After interrogating the locals we found the place and began to unpack.
The folks who showed up had lots of very nice gear including a new CL Custom AR15 HBAR sniper, one of the few AK47-Spetsnaz's in the country, and a very short custom MP5 used as a sidearm. There was one other FAMAS, an F1 with a scope. Its built-in bipod would have been useful to me in one of the scenarios, but is it worth giving up sling mounts for? Hmmm.
The site consisted of one open field littered with giant cable spools and other objects to use as cover, and some wooded areas. Heavily wooded. Heavily thorned. I've got a lot of little punctures all over my legs and hands, I found a thorn this morning still in the back of my leg that I'd been sitting and sleeping on, and I suspect I still have one in my finger. There were a few nice clear trails, and some areas off-trail that weren't quite so thick and nasty as others -- but there were plenty of places where you could get so tangled up you couldn't move. Hopefully if we play there again they'll clear it out a little bit first.
The other thing was the distance from the parking lot/safe zone. Once a game ended, the walk back uphill was murderous. I know I need to get in shape, but even some of the more fit players got worn out by that walk. My calves are that good sort of sore and tired, but my thighs are burning like mad and every time I stand up or sit down I just know they're going to give out on me.
This game was the most physical thing I've done since... maybe ever. It beats soccer (which I did as a kid) and hiking and biking (teenager) easily, and in most ways was tougher than the construction stuff I did with my dad a couple years ago. But it was fun, which makes a big difference. I'm willing to go back and do it again, which is good 'cause we're doing it with the locals next week. Maybe we'll outclass them the way Team Pride and some of the others at this game outclassed us... none of them have AEGs for starters :)
We played four scenarios that day. No armbands or other team-identifying markers so we had to memorize who was on which team. For most of the games the Simutronics folks (me, Jeff, David, Tracy and Eric) were grouped with Team Pride, who mostly wore odd subdued camo, yellow goggles and bandanas rather than hats, so it wasn't too difficult.
The first scenario was "downed pilot" -- two opposing teams trying to capture a neutral pilot and take him to the enemy's starting location. We tried an odd death rule: when you're hit, you move out of combat and count to 120 before returning. It doesn't work so well when you're surrounded, so I spent more time dead than alive. Wound up chatting with 3-4 members of the opposing team for a while rather than resurrecting, which at least kept them away from the action while our guys captured the pilot. Finally I heard a request for backup at the enemy flag at the same time that the enemy team moved out and started to engage some of our guys. They were ignoring me at that point, so I moved back a ways, took out the closest enemy and crossed the ravine to head for the flag. It was steep, muddy and thorny, and the going was slow -- I just knew they'd resurrect and shoot me before I got across, and I'd have to turn around and go back up the way I came.
I made it and turned to cover our rear, knowing I'd be followed -- but the action started to heat up near the flag so I turned toward that. Sure enough, the guy I'd shot came up behind me and had his revenge, leaving me with a big welt on my cheek and a new appreciation for the goggle rules. (Shooting glasses with open sides aren't good enough, there has to be a seal from all angles). We won shortly after that and made the long hike back to the parking area for lunch.
I had no feel for the lay of the land and in that thick stuff it was very easy to get confused. I felt a lot like a newbie in a deathmatch, way over my head and knowing I was doing stupid things, but that improved as the day went on. So did, for some reason, my FAMAS -- it was jamming a lot at first, failing to fire or firing way short, but as the day wore on it grew more and more reliable and I didn't have to resort to pistol after that first scenario.
The second scenario was a tactical withdrawal, where a small team tried to hold off a much larger force for 30 minutes. David volunteered for the small team but none of the rest of us from Simu would join him. The death rules were changed so that you had to go back to your team's starting point, and you could only re-enter twice. After my first death I should have been much more careful, but during a long exchange of fire where neither of us could reach the other through all the branches and brambles, I foolishly tried to move up and get the guy in range. He nailed me and I was out. Dead tired though so I didn't really mind having to sit around and wait for a while.
The third game was an ambushes, where one shot eliminates you from the game. We returned to our original teams, with Pride & Simu doing the ambushing. I'm not cut out for lying on my belly in a thorny patch and patiently waiting for someone to come into view while there's gunfire going on up the road. Neither is my gun, though a bipod might have helped enormously. I wasn't eliminated, and did I eventually either help flush someone out or actually get the kill (hard to say) but a couple of the enemy team evaded ours until time ran out.
For our last game we did the ambush in reverse. We were so cool as we moved down the road, or so we thought. Darren (?) with his sniper scope was called forward to check out something that the lead guy spotted, but as we moved on past him the ambushers opened up on us. We spread out and tried to make our way through the brush to either side. I saw somebody and couldn't reach him, but Darren took him out. Then we learned there was an ambusher behind us -- no way he got behind us without our knowing it once the action started, so he must have been very well hidden and very patient as we passed him. Trying to find a path through the thorns and briars so I could get into a position to engage him (and still watch our left beacuse we thought there was one more guy there), I knocked the flash suppressor off my FAMAS and lost the tiny screw. Mumble. 3-4 of us moved back up the road to find the ambusher behind us, and though we spotted him, we exchanged fire for quite some time without hitting each other. I moved up the road a little further and he managed to nail me before any of us got him.
We wound up losing that round just barely -- it was down to David on our team and Mike (the Valkyrie Air/MWRAA guy) on the other team. Mike was reloading and David turned and unloaded on him... with nothing coming out of the barrel. He thought his gun had jammed until after the game when he realized that he too was out of ammo. :)
I was amazed at how much ammo I fired. I thought 3 300-round clips was a lot, but you wind up really spraying it around. Wind and branches make it tough, but you know if you just keep firing in the right general direction you will eventually hit your target -- so you hold down the trigger and hope for the best. Most of the times I got killed, I heard BBs whacking branches all around me for 5-10 seconds first -- and since my gun fires 1000rpm I only have about 16 seconds to work with before I have to change.
The experience will no doubt be different in more open terrain. But based on yesterday's play I found:
- Those big floppy hats get caught on branches. Bandanas don't, and still keep the sun off your head.
- BDU pockets are not well suited to actually hold stuff. Particularly pistols. Luckily Mike had a tactical thigh holster with him, which I bought.
- Heavyweight BDU shirt or not, wear a t-shirt under it.
- If I have to crash through thorns again I'm getting better gloves and wearing jeans or sweat pants under the BDU pants.
- On the other hand, your temperature during a game is always too hot, no matter how chilly and windy the day is.
- Goggles and glasses fog up no matter what. I'm not sure what to do about this though.
- Knee pads are necessary but range from uncomfortable to painful for regular walking. Extra padding for the straps might help, even if it's just wearing knee braces or something.
- The valve for the Camelbak has to be secured somewhere or it drags in the dirt and gets nasty.
- Still not happy with the sling situation with the FAMAS. If I just wear it around my neck it's not too confining but it's not comfortable either. Padded strap maybe.
- The radio is awkward in a regular pouch on the tac vest. Those radio pouches seem to be the way to go.
- Tightly laced combat boots with the pants bloused inside and two pairs of socks still don't make it impossible for junk to get in there and stab at your feet.
- I'm out of shape.
- Real pain does not come from airsoft BBs, but from thorns and leg muscles.
Now that I've seen the MP5PDW and Mike's custom super-short MP5A5, I really think the MP5K's are cool. Easier to lug around and maneuver than the FAMAS, and as I found, barrel length really doesn't make a huge difference in accuracy anyway. I'm not likely to go for it right away -- have to think about upgrading my computer first and paying off some credit card junk -- but it's likely to be my next major airsoft purchase.
Anyway. Had a great time and I'm looking forward to next Sunday's local game. Atrathien will be visiting that weekend, maybe we'll drag him out there or maybe not, we'll see. :)
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now I know how Charlie Brown feels |
| 02-22-00 |
You might have noticed the place looks spruced up a bit (or really plain, if you're using an old rusty browser). I've been reorganizing my style sheet classes and updating my HTML so all the color-related stuff (and a tiny bit more) is handled by them. It warms my geeky little heart to know I can change one #FF9900 in one file to a #99CCFF and have it affect, for instance, every link that happens to be in the side bar of all the journal-related pages but not the ones in the body of the article pages. :)
The button effect (which may only work in IE) on my entry page is a style sheet trick too, not a JavaScript onMouseOver thing. They're not buttons at all, but links with their height, width, border, background-color and text-align settings carefully chosen for a and a:hover. I'm proud to say I figured that out for myself, rather than copying the gimmick from somebody (but I'd be surprised if somebody out there isn't already using it). But I did learn about IE5 filters from HTML Goodies.
The nice thing about style sheet gimmicks is while you can't see all the visual happiness in some browsers, the pages still work. I can still browse my site in Lynx...
Today at work was kind of weird. It didn't feel like work. Java class, then lunch, then learning some web stuff on my own for a couple hours, then a meeting. More Java class tommorow. My main projects du jour are maintaining the secret GM website and writing up crash recovery procedures for onsite staff. Documentation is so easy to blow off when you're busy doing real work... up until the point where you need something that only exists in the mind of somebody who happens to be in Mexico or the hospital. And every programmer who's been called at 3 AM by an OSGM probably agrees we could stand to have a little bit more info down on paper :)
Poco has gotten pretty agressive lately. He either can't tell the difference between a quarter-inch cricket and a human hand, or he wants to try "Long Pig" for variety. He was actually pretty surprised when he successfully bit me and I didn't die, but that didn't stop him from trying again next time. This morning just to fill his water dish I had to fend him off with a cardboard tube. From my readings of the kingsnake.com forums, this is just a perfectly ordinary phase that turns beardies into unholy (if small and ineffectual) terrors. Something like a cross between the Terrible Twos and puberty. He'll grow out of it.
Meanwhile, having had the opportunity to watch Josephine hunting crickets, I have a few pointers:
- Crickets are almost blind, and phenomenally stupid. They probably can't see you, and if they can, they're not smart enough to care. Therefore, freezing and pretending to be a twig for five minutes doesn't help. Just pounce on the little suckers.
- Try to work on your situational awareness. Don't get so caught up watching a cricket on the other side of the cage when there's one doing the Macarena right under your upraised head.
- When you miss a strike, you don't need to chew, swallow and lick your chops. You're not fooling anyone.
- That tail thing is just weird. Cut it out.
The MWRAA February game is imminent. I checked out one of the local surplus stores, then wound up getting a $20 pair of boots from Payless. Bought up a Motorola Talkabout tonight only to find radios at Wal-Mart costing half as much that appear to have the same features... whether there is a major quality difference I don't know. Aside from Gatorade and insect repellent I think I'm ready to rock. Melissa is going as a photographer; I may bring my digital camera on the trip but probably not risk it in the actual combat area.
Unfortunately, Airsoft 2000 -- the largest planned airsoft event in the US, to feature 24-hour scenarios on 70 acres -- is the same weekend as SimuCon 2000. Argh!!!!
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divided and conquered |
| 02-19-00 |
I still keep catching myself using "99" in the date, especially on the archive pages. My fingers have trained themselves how to type dates without consulting my brain.
Last night, Josephine was starting to show interest in mealworms... for about 15 seconds. Then she turned around and nipped lightly at Kalila. She shrugged it off. Then Jo went for her hind leg or tail or something. A brawl ensued. I wound up scooping up Jo and putting her in the short terrarium. Luckily no injuries on either of them. But I knew I'd have to arrange a more permanent setup today.
It's like this. I can't use a light bulb to heat Jo's tank because it's not tall enough. I can set both tanks crossways on the big plastic tote box that Kalila's is sitting lengthways on, but if I do that I can't use an under-tank heat pad. So I could get an aquarium stand and a heat pad, or another 10 gallon tank and reflector lamp. I should also get a couple of hide boxes so they can each have a cool one and a warm one.
Wal-Mart was the first destination. I could tell by the parking lot that Wal-Mart at noon on Saturday in the Midwest was probably a bad idea, but I doggedly went on. Stopped and looked at clothes that I thought were cool that aren't available in my size. Stopped and looked at boots that I thought were cool that aren't available in my size. Looked at furniture, didn't see anything cheap that could hold a pair of aquariums without looking goofy. Looked at the meager pet department, nada. Looked for reflector lamps, and for the first time since the dawn of discount stores, they didn't have any.
Moved on to PetSmart. Every dog and owner in St. Charles County was there. Aquarium stands started at $40. Reflectors started at $12. The cash register lines were about as long as those for Space Mountain.
Moved on to Reptiles The Right Way (where I bought Jo). They had reflectors, but there's not enough space in the store to actually carry things like aquariums. (Thankfully they're moving to a new location at the end of the month.)
 Moved on to Pets Plus. Bought an aquarium and a reflector -- identical to the Wal-Mart ones, for twice the price. Wound up not using it anyway.
Pets Plus didn't have the hide boxes/caves I wanted so I moved on to PetCo. They didn't either.
Moved on to Pampered Pet at the mall. They didn't either, but they did have a horde of teenage girls staring in horror at the cute lizards (ignoring the emperor scorpion in the tank right at their feet).
While I was there I checked out the bookstore. Bought a couple of SF novels and then realized there was a clam with a e-meter sitting out front. I almost returned the books in protest. I almost said something to the chick who was being "tested". But I'm not the confrontational type. I'd have been a failure as a hippie.
This was a well-dressed, charismatic, cheerful young guy pushing Scientology books (and no doubt Scientology itself). He had a "Hubbard electropsychometer" -- a $625 (or $3850 for the fancy one) device that measures galvanic skin resistance by having the subject hold a pair of soup cans. No kidding. Of course you could buy a more accurate, full-featured device at Radio Shack for $50, it's called a multimeter or VOM. Or you can buy a built-it-yourself "biofeedback monitor" kit for less than that; I made one when I was a kid.
If I saw this kind of thing more often I'd think about printing up some cards that said simply "www.xenu.net" and pass them out or something. But I don't. I'll just leave it up to folks like The Lisa McPherson Trust and the German government to handle stuff that is definitely too deep and dark for me.
While at the bookstore I spotted a book called HTML Goodies. I'm always looking for little tricks and cool stuff like that, so I took a look. There was a big ad for htmlgoodies.com on the cover, so I figured, why buy the book? It's a neat site though.
The Cub Scouts were at the mall in force, holding their Pinewood Derby race. For those that aren't familiar, it's a contest where each kid (and let's be honest here, their dads) gets a block of wood, a set of wheels and nails, and builds a car to be raced on a downhill track. There's a basic set of rules as to what you can do to the car, including maximum weight and size.
When I did this as a kid, we cut down the car into an aerodynamic wedge, sanded it smooth, painted it a sweet cherry red, lubed the wheels with graphite until the very concept of friction ran away screaming, and installed bullet-shaped lead fishing weights in the back that resembled huge exhaust ports. It was just under the minimum weight, though some uncreative kids insisted I was cheating by using the weights in the first place. That car was sleek and fast. That's really the only truly pleasant memory from Cub Scouts that I have.
It got beaten (barely) by an ugly block of wood with nails driven into it for weight, painted silver.
Anyway, one of the cars in the competition looked a good deal like mine. It took me back. Now of course there are web pages selling guides on car design. Bah.
Stopped by the video arcade too. While we're staggering down memory lane, let me mention that my dad used to work for an arcade chain and I used to help him out every Sunday morning before opening in exchange for a couple hours of free electronic bliss. Maybe that had some influence over where I am today. In college I could play Tetris for maybe half an hour on one quarter. It really wasn't that long ago that only the newest, hottest games and/or the most mechanically complex stuff (like the tilt-seat version of Afterburner) cost 50 cents; everything else was 25.
I was pretty appalled that the older, crummy games at this arcade were 2 tokens while the rest were 3 or 4. Why pay a buck to play a game one time when you can rent it for 5 days for $3? Playstation, N64 and Dreamcast must have seriously screwed up the arcade industry.
Fresh ideas are a bit lacking too. Networked racing games, gun games and martial arts games are about all there is. There was one semi-interesting sniper game but it looked a little cheesy and cost a buck to play, so I didn't bother.
 Newest screenshot of my home machine. Still minimalist, I'm running DarkStep with Popup R9 handling all the task management/program launching stuff. The background is xearth for Windows, a port of a Unix toy that displays a view of the Earth from the Sun, updating every 5 minutes. You can play with all kinds of settings though and get funky Mercator projections and stuff like that. (The real thing looks much better than my 256 color screenshot.)
The February MWRAA game is next weekend and GASA's order from Redwolf still hasn't shipped. This may mean that David and I will be the only ones with automatic weapons, with Eric, Tracy and Jeff in the unenviable position of being stuck with pistols. It does look like the weather should be warm enough for gas guns, but without extra mags it'll still be rough. We're keeping our fingers crossed though.
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shaky and brief
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| 02-18-00 |
Food poisoning sucks.
The first half of the week was okay though. We got the SimuCon 2000 site up and running on Tuesday and had a Java class on Wednesday. The boss has probably confused the heck out of the non-programmers in the bunch, but in one class we did more cool stuff than in months of the other guy's class. So of course we had to play with it and do our own variations (which may crash your browser so be careful)...
You've seen hamsterdance (haven't you?)... now experience the lizarddance!
VisionCon 2000 is this weekend. Valkyrie Air is going to set up in the dealer's room and have a shooting contest to win something cool (probably an M3 shotgun). A few of us from the office were thinking about going though it's a 4 hour drive, but I'm definitely bowing out at this point.
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valday update
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| 02-14-00 |
Happy Valentine's Day everybody. If you happen to live in Maryland it's also officially Frederick Douglass and Terry Atwood Day. My principal in elementary school, unless I'm remembering completely wrong here, was named after Frederick Douglass. And though I really didn't know Terry Atwood that well, he was a member of the faith who always had interesting things to say. I don't know what to think of the Libertarian movement, but unlike the donkeys and elephants, absolutely everybody I've known associated with it has been what I'd categorize as a good and selfless person. Hmm.
After this morning's "ohmygod we have to make the SimuCon 2000 website live tommorow" meeting, I returned to my desk to find a big box from buy.com on it. Maybe 13"x16" and full of styrofoam peanuts. Inside was a 3-pack of Palm styli... and that's it.
I'm supposed to get a case for my Palm III too, but apparently that shipped in a separate package. I almost want to order a monitor from these people to see what they'll pack it in.
This weekend it seems that cashiers couldn't read or count in my presence. The register might read $3.84 plain as day, and they'll ask me for $3.72. Last night at PetSmart, the cashier said one thing and the register showed me another, and the actual price after tax was neither of those. This morning at Hardee's my breakfast was $2.69 and I thought (through that crummy drive-up speaker) she said $2.59. When I gave her two bills, two quarters and a dime she said I owed her 14 more cents.
 Kalila has taken up a new hobby: climbing. She seems to want to crawl up the side of the terrarium, which she can't. Saturday night I put my hand in there hoping she'd at least step onto my palm again, and to my surprise she went right up the back of my hand and up my arm, happy as can be. I was a little worried she'd jump off and run under the sofa or worse, but when she did try to take a plunge I caught her in my other hand. I need to set up some kind of lizard-safe zone for them to play in. Meanwhile I might get a Lizard Ladder so she can at least climb the walls as she seems to want to.
Josephine doesn't seem to want to join in the reindeer gecko games. On the other hand, she now seems to go nuts when hunting crickets. At first her tail whips around madly, then she confines it to just vibrating the tip of her tail, like a rattlesnake that's had too much caffeine. She doesn't just strike, she pounces, and I could have sworn she squeaked once last night.
 There was a small cricket accident this morning. Not a major cricket accident like when 500 of the little buggers escaped into Melissa's apartment, but a small one. I keep 'em in a Cricket Corral, which features a cardboard tube that's rough on the inside and smooth on the outside, so they can climb into it to hide. To dispense crickets you pull out the tube and shake it into the cage. Normally there's 3-4 crickets in there that fall out with a couple of taps. This morning when I gave Poco his snack, there were more like 9 or 10 of them. No problem, he wiped them out and proceeded immediately to his food dish to clean that out too. I guess there's nothing like eating half your weight in crickets to stimulate the ol' appetite.
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actually, it only takes one to tango
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| 02-09-00 |
Checking out the Rogue Spear Database yesterday, I came across a mod called The Temporary Tango. It lets you play as the terrorists... on a few maps anyway. You can choose from all the different tango skins, a small selection of weapons and a very small selection of gear. No heartbeat sensor, grenades or silenced SMGs for the bad guys. This cranks the tension up a lot higher, and your chances of completing a mission are much lower. On the first map your opponents are all rent-a-cops, but the second map also features heavily armored, highly skilled, fast SWAT guys.
Rather than Terrorist Hunt mode, TTT offers a Killing Spree. This was a lot of fun and seriously challenging on the first two maps, in fact I haven't been able to complete the second map yet. Every corner induces a new thrill of fear, because you never know if you're about to step out in front of a SWAT guy with an MP5SD5, hear a couple of soft clicks and fall down dead.
Unfortunately the role reversal is not complete on all maps. I didn't try them all, but map 5 (the plane) allowed me a limited choice of either tango or Rainbow skins and pit me against terrorists, and map 13 (Siberian base) forced me to use arctic BDUs and take out Russians. The weapons limitations and altered radio acknowledgements still apply to all the maps though.
So between that distraction and other stuff, it's actually been four whole days since I last played The Sims. Definitely have to get myself a better computer at home.
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boardom
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| 02-06-00 |
No, that's not a typo. I've dumped the crummy old guestbook (who signs those things anyway?) in favor of a much more interactive and community-building message board. Spiffy keen!
Steph got a massage yesterday. Strange women with soft hands and mineral oil. So she kept telling me and Jeff. I'm a little bit creeped out by the idea of going myself, maybe it's just the shyness thing. Naturally, I woke up this morning with a weird pain in my shoulders that I've never had before. It's all her fault.
One of the marks of a good game is that it changes the way you look at the real world. That new perspective might be silly -- like trying to shift-drag a group of people to select them and send them somewhere after playing RTS games, or lurking quietly in the shadows after playing Thief -- but there you go. The Sims has that trait, and it makes human behaviour seem really amusing for some reason. Lunch at Chili's yesterday was a matter of little green arrows improving the Hunger state and one little red arrow worsening Comfort (those benches and low tables). Those half-overheard conversations become formless, meaningless babble just as in the game, while during your own conversations you're sitting there picturing little thought bubbles over peoples' heads with icons representing the subject matter.
How am I doing so far? I had a couple more failures, and then decided to take advantage of a money cheat (don't ask me for it, it's out there online if you search for it a little). I built a fabulous, huge, bizarre, house and put an active, outgoing single chick in it. I decided she's not going to take a job, unless maybe Life of Crime comes up. (Oddly enough, there are classified ads for pickpockets, a regular 9-3 schedule, and a carpool.) Instead she's eventually going to win over every person in the neighborhood into her house, which will expand to keep up with the need. Those she can't win over with friendship or romance, she'll trap or kill. Starvation? Fire? Drowning? There are many possibilities. Bwahahaha.
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what Sims to be the problem?
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| 02-05-00 |
What a day. First, a mysterious faceless baby took pot shots at the cat...
...then an everyday grease fire turned tragic when Ms. Spiky Freak spontaneously burst into flames.
What a way to start my on-call week.
The two airsoft orders (one major, one minor) that I've been babbling about arrived today. I found the Tokyo Marui gas blowback Beretta M92F Military Model pretty amazing. Of course it's the first GBB I've ever gotten my hands on, but I feel it's the best airsoft buy I've made yet.
As Redwolf's review says it does have visible seams if you look for them. Otherwise it looks and feels just like a gun should. Your eyes and hands will tell you it's not a toy -- even after firing it. Especially after firing it. The thing has a nice powerful kick and loud report. The BBs have got some decent force behind them too, though it's hard to say for sure because the psychological feeling of power is much greater than a spring or electric. Accuracy seems to be better than my FAMAS though we didn't do a scientific comparison.
After going through about 4 mags of BBs (2 charges of gas) I switched to briefly try out the Marui spring Glock 17. It's hardly fair, but after the Beretta it felt very light and toylike and plasticy and weak. Of course a real Glock is a high-tech lightweight polymer thing that probably doesn't feel like a handful of iron either. The
"weakness" of this gun is merely an illusion -- the trigger action is light and firing is quiet, but the spring is no wimp and the shot itself is in a whole other class. I want to try this one again with a clean palate, so to speak, and get a good idea of how it performs. I have a feeling it's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
My FAMAS scope mount, on the other hand, is a big handful of iron. Mounting it on that funky French handle has completely changed the balance of the rifle, for the better I think. Unfortunately the cheap red dot sight I was hoping to mount on it requires a much narrower rail. Little disappointment there, but no biggie.
Unlike my Splatball order, manuals were included... in that tantalizingly familiar mix of 95% Japanese, 5% wonky English. Various safety cartoons depict the sort of things one shouldn't do, such as:
- allow your dog to shoot the gun
- point it in your eye when firing
- read magazines
- include plural noun in English phrase on t-shirt
- make weird Japanese onomatopoeic noises while shooting
- operate a drill press while a demon stands over your shoulder
As far as I can tell, this is the wisdom imparted by Mr. M, age 25, Shooting Instructor. He bears a suspicious resemblance to the anime chick wearing safety goggles and brandishing her gun in a dangerous manner on another safety brochure. In fact it looks like the same sketch cut off at the neck so you can't see Mr. M. is really a Ms.
In other news, I've started playing something new... and there aren't any guns in it! I never got into Sim City, Sim Small Rural Village, Sim Particle Accelerator or any of the other Sim Somethings that Maxis has released... they just didn't seem that interesting to me. But The Sims is something else again. You don't build and manage cities, empires, anthills or theme parks. You build people, families, careers, fortunes, etc. as you see fit. Set up their personality traits, buy their furniture and appliances, build their house if you want. Let them be bums and couch potatoes, or see how successful they can be (in business or science or crime or whatever) by your own standards. It's very open-ended, but not easy. The challenge here is getting everything done that needs to be done in a day to take care of basic needs, keep them from getting depressed, develop relationships with other people, etc. without letting an inept cook burn down the house. Heh.
My first Sim was a single girl with traits I thought I could sympathize with -- moderately neat but not anal about it, very nice, very shy, not highly active, moderately playful. I set her up with expensive furniture and a hot tub, thinking these would help improve the quality of life for someone who doesn't thrive on social interaction.
She was a dismal failure from the outset. She was always low on energy, and usually either uncomfortable, hungry or hated her surroundings. I had her turn down the first job she was offered (not knowing that they're all crappy until you get a few promotions and some social networking going on). She was subsequently too depressed to even consider looking for a job, so she ran out of money fast. Playing games on her computer or reading books or dancing cheered her up a bit, but it took time and generally other needs were neglected instead. On her first attempt to use the hot tub, it broke, leaving a big flooded mess for her to clean up (she couldn't afford a maid) and the expensive tub to repair (she couldn't afford a repairman).
Then I read the manual. Heh. I'm eager to try starting over, perhaps building a custom house more efficient than the one I started with, and no hot tub for a while yet. :)
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two, two, two dates in one
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regulars:
moo
third
chat
kimbered
logic
shades
on a whim:
orisinal
bilbanan
smurf
bang
lobster
yugop
skin
wood
rhythm
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