Introduction
Greetings bloggers, My name is Joel and I am the new webmaster and graphics director here at Star Fleet Games. For the past week I have been helping out here by updating the various sites, uploading images, and updating the Hailing Frequencies newsletter for the company. I am having a lot of fun while I work here; I find the job to be entertaining and challenging, providing me with an opportunity to put my graphic design skills to good use.The people I work with now are fun, engaging, and I enjoy working with them so far. Even though I am the webmaster I do find it enjoyable to work in the warehouse section and package the differing products that go out to you, the consumer. As I have said I find this job to be a challenging yet rewarding experience that will continue to provide me with graphic design experience and an enjoyable experience in the field of web and graphic design. Good luck during your day, enjoy life, and above all: stay cool:). Over and out.
Steve Cole writes: Some people do not realize that you can download what amounts to a free copy of the FEDERATION COMMANDER game (well, enough of the game to play a few battles). Go to www.StarFleetGames.com/fc and you will find a lot of stuff you can download. Some of those downloads include: o The free First Missions packet (demo version of FEDERATION COMMANDER). o Turn gauges and firing arcs for the tabletop rules. o Sample Ship Cards. o Wallpapers of game covers. o Frequently asked questions. o Information for retailers. o The original theatrical trailer (ok, not that, but it WAS the original flyer handed out at trade shows). o Notes from the game designer (Steve Cole) on what parts of the older game STAR FLEET BATTLES we decided to include in FEDERATION COMMANDER. But that's just a start. If you join the Commander's Circle, which is free, you can download the monthly Communique which includes scenarios, tactics, and new ships. You can also access a database of FEDERATION COMMANDER players looking for new opponents (you!)
This week at ADB, Inc., 7-13 March 2010
Steve Cole reports: The weather was mild all week, in the 50s and 60s. We had some rain early in the week. The spam storm continued most of the week, with the on-deck filters stopping up to ten thousand of them per day. Saturday, it suddenly stopped. At the office, the floors were cleaned and polished this week. I spent most of this week doing after-action reports for the F&E 2010 project. I did get Joel everything he needed to send Hailing Frequencies on Wednesday and we got Communique uploaded. I was sick most of Monday. I set up the file for Communique #52 and started doing stuff for it, such as updating the Gorn BDD. We had a lot of mail orders this week, which kept Leanna and Mike Sparks busy. Leanna had cataract surgery on Friday; it went well and her vision is much improved. Steve Petrick worked on CL41, R12, and C3A. Joel Shutts got the newsletter released, Communique uploaded, the pull-down menus fixed on the Commander's Circle, and some stuff uploaded. The contractor working on our house finished Phase Two (remodeling the master bedroom) which involved replacing the carpet with ceramic tile, removing the popcorn, repainting, replacing all of the woodwork including the doors, turning Leanna's old bathroom into my new walk-in closet and gun room, and added a modern ceiling fan. Next week, he begins Phase Three, which will remodel the rest of the house.
Training: Good Lessons and Bad
This is Steven Petrick Posting. The passage of time sometimes gives one chance to sit down and review past events of one's life from a new perspective. As a kid, I wanted to be the best soldier I could be, but it happened that my introduction to Army ROTC was at the end of the Vietnam War. During my freshman year in college level ROTC, going to the woods for training was a "field training exercise" (FTX). We carried M-14 rifles (with blank adapters) and worked on learning to patrol and handle tactical problems. Between my Freshman and Sophomore years, things changed. The program was revamped more with an eye towards encouraging cadets to just remain in the program than actually teaching them useful field craft. Going to the woods was now called an "adventure training exercise" (ATX). No weapons were carried, and the emphasis was on fun and puzzles (leadership challenges). This leads to the point. My Freshman year I actually learned how to use an M-14 rifle. Between my Junior and Senior years when I attended my Advanced Camp, I was issued an M-16 rifle. While we were sometimes shown these weapons during my sophomore and junior years, we did not practice on them. The result. At a key point in a battle my M-16 jammed. I had absolutely no knowledge of how to clear a jam in an M-16. For precious seconds I was helpless while trying to figure out how to make the weapon operable again, only to have the weapon immediately jam a second time without firing. I managed to get it cleared a second time and shoot a nearby opponent before she could shoot me. But the only reason I shot her first was she went into shock when she finally spotted me and saw how close I was to her. If she had not frozen she could have easily picked me off. And that was the other training point. I could very easily have been marked by that one incident to consider women worthless under fire. She did, after all, literally just stand there and watch me clear my rifle the second time (in the same extremely clumsy and time consuming manner in which I had cleared it the first time). I knew that any male cadet would have shot me first. I learned, during that Summer, the correct manner in which to clear an M-16 rifle, and learned it well enough that in later times the motions were programmed. (My issued rifle during my basic course jammed on the range, for example, and I cleared it automatically and so quickly that I COULD have still taken the shot, but assumed, wrongly, that I was out of time.) But it was very easy for me now, to understand what can happen with poorly trained but aggressive troops. (I was being aggressive to be where I was to shoot the girl, but that was "native" field craft as opposed to military training, my military training proved to be sorely lacking in a key component that could have "cost my life"). To this day there are a lot of things that I learned that stick (and make watching TV hard). In the first half of this year's "Leverage" season finale, I listened to the bad guys spray the detective's car with bullets, and could only note that the weapon could not fire that long with that magazine, and that the car had more bullet holes (with Tivo, I actually stopped the screen and counted holes) than the magazine could hold, details like that drive me nuts. Not to mention the idea that the detective was not also made into Swiss cheese since his car door would not have stopped the bullets from penetrating. But at least I know that a woman with a firearm is as dangerous as a man (I did not learn the bad lesson from that one female cadet).
MORE TO THE STORY
Steve Cole comments: Some television shows seem to do a poor job of getting all of the information presented in a logical order. Obviously, information is missing, and I wonder how many (like me) try to figure out what's really going on. On STOSSEL on Thursday, 11 March 2010, they took Louisiana to task for having a license requirement for florists, which seems silly. They derided the state for using the license system to limit competition, despite the head of the trade association pointing out that it did nothing of the kind, anyone could take the test and 90% passed it. The two nice blonde ladies did not pass, probably because they did not study and practice. (The general subjects and some of the specific skills required are public knowledge.) To be sure, some of those skills are silly and outdated, but the purpose of the license (and arguably a dumb one) is to preserve a body of skills and knowledge, even if (especially if) that specific knowledge is no longer used. One might argue that the test should be updated, and one might argue that the whole point of licensing florists is just nonsense, but not that the test limits competition. I must wonder if the real reason that Louisiana licenses florists is to collect the license fees. On an episode of KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, Gordon Ramsay went to a restaurant in Indiana which was over a million dollars in debt and sinking fast. (Naturally, he fixed the problems and made the restaurant a thriving success; the guy really is good at that.) The restaurant was owned half by the on-site manager, and half by a couple who owned another (successful) restaurant 200 miles away. The three complained that they had put their savings, their inheritance, their retirement funds, and everything they could borrow into keeping the failing restaurant afloat. The real question, one nobody asked, is why the couple who had another restaurant cashed in their retirement accounts without fixing the problems. Why did they need Gordon Ramsay? Couldn't the husband just have told his wife "Run our place for a month while I go figure out why John is failing to run out other investment at a profit?" The recent KING TUT UNWRAPPED show included the theory that the boy-king had become a strong ruler who was beyond the control of his advisors by the time he died. I find the evidence for this very suspect. (It's more like the show's producers and guest historians just wanted to think better of Tut than others have heretofore.) They base this on the "newly discovered" data in the tomb of Huy showing Tut involved in the Libyan campaign (which is mentioned in Egyptology books I have that are twenty years old) and newly discovered blocks that might show Tut's chariot in the Syrian campaign a year before Tut died. This is not really unlikely. The Saqarra tomb of General Horemheb (carved during Tut's lifetime, and Tut would have been told if Horemheb was exaggerating) details both of these campaigns, notes that Horemheb was under command and had been SENT on the campaigns by Tut, who remained in the capital.
Stephen V. Cole writes: Have you ever heard of Cafe Press? Cafe Press is a website where you can open up a free online shop and promote products on your website. Cafe Press creates and sells products with designs provided by various companies. So upon learning about Cafe Press, Leanna set up an account and we have uploaded several designs for T-shirts, coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments, mousepads, etc. See www.CafePress.com/starfleetuniv for these items. And take a look at our new I-heart-Klingons T-shirt! If you have any questions or comments or would like to see something on Cafe Press, let me know and I will try to set it up for you! Email me at: Design@starfleetgames.com
A Philosophy of Surrender
This is Steven Petrick Posting. I have commented that I have a tendency to take a "no surrender" attitude towards combat. I thought I would take a moment to discuss why, even that, is subject to variation. No surrender applies to me, personally. I very much would rather go down fighting than give up. I am comfortable saying that because I did, one time in my life, face the concept of "maybe if I surrender he will not kill me", and chose to if necessary die rather than yield. But, again, that is a personal choice, and it can be overridden in a number of different ways. I am subject to my superiors' determining that we will surrender. I can, in such case, ask for permission to try to escape or take some other action, but I am honor bound to obey a lawful order, particularly when my desire to continue to resist could get others killed. I am subject, if I am the man in command, to keeping my subordinates alive if I can. If resistance seems hopeless, or if there is no purpose to it (for example, holding a choke-point as long as possible to allow other forces to escape or establish a new line), then I have an obligation to consider surrender to save the lives of the men under my command. There are still other factors. I would never surrender to Al Qaida terrorists, nor surrender men under my command to such a group, under any circumstances. We would all only be killed in any case. I would think long and hard about risking a surrender to any communist group, but this is because I have studied history, including the fates of POWs in the hands of communist groups, and I would rather die than accept a possibly lingering death with bouts of torture. (Real torture, not what is defined nowadays as torture to gain political points.) If I was engaged in battle with the British, I might be more inclined to surrender (the British Army is hardly free of atrocities, but has an overall pretty good record when it comes to prisoners of war . . . not perfect, but pretty good). So, while I would myself do all I could to avoid becoming a prisoner of war, there are circumstances where it could happen. (This includes being knocked out in hand to hand combat, or by a nearby explosion, or debris from such, etc.) But as a rule, I would rather die than be taken.
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