RETIRED WARRANT

Skype has been up and down

Last night when I got home I found that Skype was still having problems and there was a statement on the net about how they had a software problem and would be back up as soon as possible.

We went ahead and did everything via chat until I think about 8:30 – 9 PM when it finally game up, though it was still a bit iffy and kept dropping from time to time.

This morning when I got up it was down again and their site had an updated message saying it should be up sometime today. So hopefully when I get off work it will be back up.

Laila and I have been using it for so long that I forgot how to configure some of the others so I hope they have it fixed. It seemed odd playing the game without discussing what was going on while making our moves and all. Also it means having additional chat windows open which for me is distracting.

Last night again I was so tired. I almost fell asleep a few times before 11 PM rolled around and I went to bed. Then when I did go to bed about 12:15 AM the dogs started barking and going wild. I went ahead to make sure no one was trying to break into the house or the next door neighbor’s house but it turned out that they were barking at the neighbor’s cat that we are currently cat sitting for. She has finally gotten brave and now ventures around the house checking things out and is now starting to play with the other cats and all. I guess she just had to get used to things.

Anyway I guess that is about it for now. I will try to blog over the weekend if I am not tied up with stuff.

Well I am back with a little time before getting out of here for the weekend. Earlier today I saw something that brought back some bad memories. As I was on my way in to work this morning I heard a ship’s whistle sound one long blast which either meant they were testing it or they were getting underway.

Later while looking for someone I went to the break area and sure enough someone got underway as well as a few others. It seems they will go out and play with the Marines next week so they will pull out and head up the coast over the weekend to pick up Marines at Camp Pendleton. The only one I saw pull out was USS Tarawa (LHA-1) but some of the amphibious ships I saw on the accompanying piers were gone too, so they must have pulled out earlier.

I used to hate that, pulling out on a Friday and pulling in on a Monday. When you are on a ship at sea every day but Sunday is a work day. If something is broke Sunday is also a work day. Also every day you have to stand your watches and all. So pulling out on a Friday when you were looking forward to the weekend is always a bummer. The same can be said with pulling in on a Monday, because you have already missed the weekend and have the full work week to look forward too.

Then of course local operations are the pits because most of the time you are located right off the coast. You can see San Diego, Oceanside and all from at sea and sometimes it can be hard to be so close but yet so far.

At night though on all the ships I was on we usually went out to do what we call “Pump and Dump”. That is where you go out greater than 50 miles from the coast to pump bilges and dump trash. We would usually pick a grid or to on the charts and do what we call, steaming in the box, where you would go ahead and just try and keep 5 miles away from and contacts while staying in your box.

So anyway, I just remembered having those feelings of losing a weekend and kind of felt sorry for the sailors on those ships.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I will try to have a great weekend myself.

Busy times at work

Well I have to say that yesterday afternoon and last night were very entertaining. In the afternoon after the class left for the day Petty Officer Kelly probably the one guy at work I am tightest with, was taking care of a problem which needed to be done with one of our two antenna systems. It consisted of replacing an antenna control cable. When he first took the cannon plug off the cable we didn’t have the proper pin removal tools and so the connector was destroyed, but we had spare connectors so he decided to replace it.

When he first started placing the pins in the cannon plug he used the little plastic pin insertion tools that came with the connector, but the plastic pin tools are junk and they get chewed up fairly easy, and that was what happened. He remembered seeing a high quality tool kit for replacing pins in one of the old classrooms where they are removing equipment and getting ready to install new stuff, so he asked Senior Chief if we could have the kit as they were just going to dispose of all the stuff in the room. Senior of course said yes, so we got the kit and he installed the pins and we test operated the antenna. Everything worked great, and then he had to put the backplane on the connector and dress everything up.

That was where the trouble began. The new connector didn’t come with a new backplane and he assumed since it was the same connector that he could just use the old backplane. Well the two pieces were threaded differently and so all that work was wasted. This morning he went from lab to lab and finally found the right backplane for the connector and then did all the work. Anyway yesterday when eh was trying to get the old backplane to fit Senior Chief and one of the other Chiefs were giving him a hard time and it was really funny watching them get on his case. Everyone knew it was all in fun so no feelings were hurt.

Anyway after that I went home, but on the way I had to get a book of stamps at the post office and they sold me this really gay looking stamp with a heart and love written on it. Well as long as the bills get paid I guess it is all cool.

Then the next order of business was that we were asked by our next door neighbor to cat sit while they are on vacation. Judy has two female cats and this one is a female so no problem, or that’s what I thought. The first thing that happened was the cat attacked Judy and scratched the heck out of her. Then the cat would not move away from the front door so that we could close it. I reached down to pet her and get her settled down and she scratched the heck out of me. I finally got a broom and kind of pushed her away from the door gently and then she went into the down stairs bathroom and would not come out. Judy went ahead and put her cat box and some food and water in there for her and we hope that she will get over being frightened soon.

This morning was interesting. I was starting to teach my favorite area, when all of a sudden it was time to fill out what we call dream sheets so that took up some class time. A dream sheet is what the students fill out to send to the detailer. The detailer uses the dream sheet to assign the students to their first permanent duty station so it is a very big deal for them.

They have to select what is most important to them, Shore Duty, Sea Duty, or Overseas Duty. They will rank these 1, 2, and 3 with the most desired being 1. After that each section gives them three choices for type of duty and three choices for location again prioritized. So we had them fill them out, and then take them home with them to think about where they want to go and discuss it with family and all. Then we will collect them tomorrow and send them off. The students will receive their orders in the first part of October.

After that I taught antennas for a while, but then got word that the class has to go to some safety brief at 11 AM, so I finished up the topic I was teaching and sent them off to the brief. My boss then had a meeting with us during lunch to set up evaluations and iron out leave schedules and all. I already have my evaluations done and we had already agreed that I would carry over the vacation days for the good of the job. After that I did some maintenance on a transceiver and now I will be entering grades next because someone accidentally eraser the grade sheet. And no it was not me. Actually somehow the grades for the last class are showing up with the names from this class. I will just keep a separate file and copy it via zip drive vice doing it on the grade drive. This is not the first time something has happened to the grades data base, so I will just keep mine here and backed up.

Well speaking of that time to get moving on it.

Saving Water

The weekend is over and while I got a lot done there were still some things I would have liked to get finished but never got to.

No problem though, I will get to them. The one thing I did get finished with that I am very happy with is organizing my bills and statements. I have been meaning to get to it for a long time, but I just let the stack get higher and higher. Finally the stack got so high I had enough and decided to do something about it. Now the box where my incoming mail goes is empty and also all the checks for next month are written and ready to mail.

I was happy to see Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame over the weekend. These guys were remarkable and I love the fact that they each played their entire careers with one team.

Gwynn was known as Mr. Padre having grown up in the San Diego area and having played his entire career with the Padres, though he could have made a lot more money playing for another team. Ripken played his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles and broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played. In this time of steroids and performance enhancing drugs these guys were both clean and both good ambassadors of the game. Mark McGwire should have made it this year but the steroid accusations will probably keep him from being selected for a while.

San Diego has really been hopping with Comiccon and the west coast tryouts for American Idol going on. I heard on the news there is no a single hotel room to be had here. That should give the economy a boost.

I guess also there is some bad news, because of the drought we are in they are trying to limit residents to 20 gallons of water a day. I don’t know how they are going to work that but I will tell the kids to try and save water and all.

Well almost time to get to work. I guess I had better get this closed and get in there and teach.

Busy weekend

I didn’t blog over the weekend as I just didn’t seem to get around to it, though I did get a whole ton of stuff done over the weekend. I guess we’re getting too busy with Unification Wars game, and I am sorry for lack of blogging.

Anyway over the weekend we made the commissary run, I ironed all my work clothes and we did a bunch of cleaning. It might not sound like much but with the ironing I was catching up on my own laziness. I have been doing laundry each weekend and then instead of ironing the clothes right away I have been hanging them upstairs in the closet.

I would pick out clothes that were not wrinkled from the ones there, but over time my available choices started getting smaller and smaller.

So this weekend when David did his laundry and threw my stuff in a laundry basket it was all terribly wrinkled so I broke out the iron and while pressing them I went ahead and got the stuff out of the closet and pressed it too. Now I think I can go about three maybe four weeks without doing laundry, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea.

This weekend something funny happened. On the way to the commissary I stopped off to pick up the mail and there was an express mail envelope in my post office box. The label was all faded out and unreadable, someone had removed the top copy. Anyway I opened it up to see what it was and it was a marriage license from Wisconsin. Since it obviously wasn’t for me I went back into the post office and talked to the lady at the counter. As we were talking it all of a sudden dawned on me, it was for one of my students.

Mail delivery to students is a little slow here on the base and so when someone is going to get something sent via express mail or a courier service we get it sent to one of the staff members houses. They get it quicker that was. Anyway I had forgotten that one of the students used my address for the express mail. This morning just to make sure I didn’t forget about it again I put it on the front seat of the car. He was happy to get it when he came in this morning.

Laila and family are going to see the new Harry Potter movie today while I am at work. It is evening over there and I guess they have really wanted to see it. I am not a big fan of the Harry Potter series, I guess I might be too old.

This morning getting to work was an adventure and I almost was late even though I left on time. There was a big wreck on Interstate 5 in the northbound lanes about two miles south of the naval station. Since everyone listens to the traffic report on the radio and TV they all took Interstate 805 causing it to backup.

It made the 805 a nightmare and also all the streets leading to it as everyone had the same idea on how to get to work. To make matters worse, somehow I wound up behind a cement truck when I got off the freeway and every stop sign and red light was a long wait as they are slow getting up to speed.

The gate was no problem and I zipped right through there, but then a ship’s crew was doing their Physical Readiness Test on the street we are located on, so I got stuck behind all the slow runners. I did make it on time but someone did take my normal parking spot.

Well it is time to get to work for the day.

Back to work

Sorry for not blogging yesterday but from the moment I got up and logged on, I was busy with chats and since it was a holiday and all we had a few more people on during the day. At the same time we had a few folks missing in our game, so we had to protect for them.

Any way yesterday was not a good day for some members of the fed, with some suffering some very bad losses as a result of being double teamed or coming out of DP unattended. In one case three retals were used in less than a few seconds on an unattended empire carrying outpost. The first hit dropped the empire below outpost level with an unsuccessful retaliation from 4B above. The empire fell almost 1 billion in PR and though we had five people posting that hit took it below all of our stacks. The second two hits were successful retaliations from 5 B above which resulted in the loss of over 1 million planets.

I got a lot of discussion in all the chats as we in the fed really felt bad, but we were reassured by people of the other feds that there was not a thing we could have done to prevent the loss. Anyway that was pretty much the topic of the day, as the spammers came down and double teamed our folks. It was suicide and then spam hit pretty much all afternoon.

I got a lot of infrastructure researched and started making up spreadsheets with both battle records and ship types to help me learn more about them. Everyone seems to have an opinion on what ships work best for this and that and the opinions vary greatly amongst people. I will just rely on what I work on and see how that goes.

So while working on the game and all I got a few things done around the house. Judy and Carlos went over to Rose’s house for a visit and I really didn’t want to do any traveling around figuring all the nuts would be on the road for the holidays. Also we have a heat wave going on so it was better to stay within the friendly confines of the house.

I did make hamburgers for dinner to fit with the holiday, and didn’t use patties this time but made them from scratch. The kids loved them.

This morning we didn’t have to be in as early so I got up and went online to collect my space programs and check my op. I have to start learning to be a little more careful because I messed up and put 32,000 planets on an outer instead of on my main and that was a huge mistake. I corrected it with a planetary restructure and it allowed me to use some PCC’s that I had to increase my planet count a little. That was actually good since while I was out yesterday there were very few people to hit and I did not have the opportunity to gain much before I got put in.

It was strange coming to work today because there was absolutely no traffic what so ever. Even at the gate there was no traffic and so it was a quiet day. I got through all tech manual stuff and then called it a day when we got to system identification. I don’t want to get to far ahead because I want to teach the schematics on Monday.

So I guess that is it for the day. Oh yeah I can hardly wait to hear the new rounds of democratic talking points on the Scooter Libby thing. So he got his jail term suspended by the President. All because he didn’t remember what someone told him or had some contradictory stuff. It has already been proven that Valerie Plame was exposed by others so I have a hard time seeing this guy not get a full pardon.

And now Slick Willy and Hillary our protesting against it. Didn’t Bill pardon Mark Rich, who had moved to France to avoid prosecution and his own brother was pardoned for drug use. Slick Willy of course says his pardons are different, and I guess that is true. George Bush is not making any money off his pardons. So I will watch the insanity continue.

Well I have got to go get stuff done. Have a great day.

I finally got that done

Well it is Saturday and I have had a slow start to the day after staying up too late last night and sleeping in this morning.

I did finally get started on the laundry and I have to break out the checkbook and get some bills paid. I also have to make a store run because we are out of laundry soap again, but I finally got moving.

Last night I finally got the pictures I took on the last trip downloaded from the camera and on the desktop. I also posted them on Flickr where Laila has access to my account and can download them on her blog if she wants.

I will download and post two of them here and then I will have Laila go ahead and post the descriptions later since I want to make sure of the names and all. I am so bad with names.

This one is Laila, Joel (Honorbound) and their families and of course me, that we took during one of our meetings.

This one here is of Laila’s best friends from her old neighborhood, Vera and Sherwin.

So now that I have that done, I will go ahead and get back to the chores. You all have a great weekend.

The trip home

Hi folks, and I am really sorry about neglecting the blog for so long. I just was so busy doing stuff with Laila and others that I totally gave up on trying to keep up with things.

I am now in the air and on my way home. It was a great trip as we were able to meet some of the players in Unification Wars and learn more about the game. We also spent some good quality time together and with friends.

But now it is time to get back home and get to work. I will be blogging daily again and keeping everything updated from here on out. I do have a few things to get taken care of as usually happens after a long trip, but I should have that done right away.

We are about 4 hours out of San Francisco now and I think I will go ahead and blog quickly about the trip and then carry it on when I get to San Francisco and have some power to be able to plug into.

While the trip here was a total fiasco, the trip home has been a lot better. Laila dropped me off at the airport abut 4 hours before the flight. I got in a short line of only 6 people and it only took a little over a hour to get my boarding pass, which is pretty fast for Philippine Air.

I then went through customs and the second checkpoint, I forgot to tell of the one when you enter the airport, and then I called Laila. I talked to her for a while but the place was pretty crowded and I was really tired of standing so I went ahead and told her I was going to go sit for a while, which I did.

I was watching the standard airport stuff, like the people trying to sneak stuff through airport security, the lovers almost having sex as they said their goodbyes and all. I was talking with this one younger Filipino/American guy from San Francisco and then he wandered around making friends, mostly trying to meet women. It was all fun to watch.

I then called Laila back and talked to her until they started boarding. The only incident I saw going through the final security check and getting ready to board was this lady who was a first class passenger. She was really creating quite a scene as she did not think she had to wait in line to go through security since she was first class. The airline has nothing to do with security so she had to wait like everyone else and she was really angry about it. I got through before she did, but I had this secret hope that she would get all her stuff searched while going through. That went fairly quick and the plane was not full so I was able to stretch out as the middle seat was empty and the Filipino guy in the isle seat was really small so he had plenty of room.

I watched the first movie and then went to sleep for a while. The movie selection was the same old lame stuff that they usually have on these flights, all g-rated mostly Disney flicks.

Now I am waiting for them to either show the TV shows or rerun one of the movies or something. I have a set of NCIS video’s with me so I can put one of them on if I feel the need but I have been thinking abut a new spreadsheet layout for the game and I might work on that for a bit.

So I guess until I get to San Francisco this is it for now.

All right, I got to San Francisco and actually got here a half an hour early. It was kind of cool that I did get here early since it took forever to get off the plane and then when I did get off the plane it took forever t get my luggage.

Every time I fly with Philippine Air they give people grief in line about carry on baggage and all. Every time I get on the plane and then try and get off the plane I basically see all kinds of violations of the carry on baggage rule.

Philippine Air does have a charge for overweight carry on baggage and with the soaring costs of air travel and fuel prices, if I were them I would go ahead and start weighing the bags and assessing the fines at the cabin door. That would stop these people who try and move their entire household on the plane as carry on baggage. I carry just one small bag that fits under the seat in front of me. It gets extremely irritating to try and get off the plane while these people trying to get the bags and bags of stuff out of the overhead bins. I would be really grateful to see them enforce their policy. If these people had to pay out of pocket for the inconveniences they cause people they would stop doing it.

Next we had to take the long hike to customs. They have lines for returning US residents, but then no one pays attention to those lines and as they just go to whatever line they want to go to. So those lines were backed up and when I got to the counter the guy gave me the 20 questions routine. He asked me where I had gone, how long I was there and how many times I had visited. He then asked me if I brought back any CD’s in which I answered yes. That perked his interest until I told him that they were the Columbia House CD’s I took with me.

I then went to the endless wait at the baggage carousel and got my bag to take through customs and turn back in at the other end. That whole thing seems like a waste to me. Why can’t they just check you through and if they want to search your stuff pull it out as it is being transferred to the next airline. Oh well, they are the government and there to help me.

I then had no problem getting to the United Airlines counter to get my boarding pass. I then went through security there and off to the gate. I tried to call Judy on the payphone to let them know when I get in, but the pay phones were all broken. There was this guy there that saw what happened and let me use his cell phone to call, so I was able to tell them when I would get in.

I found a great spot with a receptacle and resumed the blogging until my flight starts boarding which should be in about ten minutes or so. Now I think that since it will be boarding soon I will hit the little boy’s room and get ready to go. I will write tomorrow’s post from work during the lunch hour.

A little perturbed

Well today has been really busy and so I haven’t had much time to do anything. On the news front I guess the guys that bag groceries at some of your local grocery stores will be going out on strike. I guess they want a wage increase to $11.03 an hour. That is ridiculous, as I heard it put bagging groceries is not a head of household job.

Also Paris Hilton is trying to get a pardon from her jail term. Lets see, drunk driving on a revoked license, she didn’t show up for her alcohol safety class, and then she was late for court. I am surprised she only got 45 days in jail. She had better not get pardoned. Perhaps a little of the hard life will wake her up to the fact that just because you are rich and popular doesn’t mean you are exempt from the law.

I am a bit ticked off today, though I have calmed down a bit since last night and this morning. It was a good thing I got to teach today because it takes my mind off the everyday life stuff and always puts me in a better mood.

In Unification Wars you are better off belonging to a federation because you get protection and you have access to advice and help. Since I have taken the initiative to work on my empire and build it to be self sufficient I don’t really need credits or food or anything from others, though I always have excess and help others both in our federation and outside of it.

The federation also supplies you with your outpost which is your reinforcements when your empire is out of damage protection. Each day before I leave for work I check what empires will be out next and I post. If I come home for lunch I post before going back to work. At night when I am home I post for the people going out.

I don’t ask much in return other than to have live posters to refresh the outpost when some of it is used just as I do for them. I also ask that each night I get a chance to reset my damage protection. I always look to see how many people are going to be out. If it is going to be a busy night I will dp some folks and gain enough planets so that when I am dp’ed I at least break even. I can get out and get back making room for others in about 20 minutes to an hour. That did not happen last night and I am still angry about it.

People are not looking at how much time the other members have left and when they go out they stay out. If you are part of a group you have to make sure what you do does not hurt others, and this is not being done by some players. I know we have a two hour limit in the federation, but if we have five or six people that are coming out during that time get out get in and go later.

I have over 4.3 Million planets now and I have to come out at higher PR’s to better protect what I have. That takes a lot of op from the posters and it takes a lot of turns for them to get it posted. During the evening when players go out, I as a LT make sure that everyone has at least 4 stacks, many times they have 6 or 8. Last night when I first went out I had 2, and though a few people posted static op before logging off they still were not live posting.

I hate to be a complainer, but I have on many occasions sacrificed sleep, turns, and credits posting for people who went out late at night and when there was a shortage of op posters. I don’t complain, I just do it out of a sense of responsibility. I don’t feel I get that in return.

We have several people who are posting for their lords, but not for their fed mates which is a practice that must be eliminated. If you need to post for your lord go join his fed. Do not use our assets and then not give us assets to use in return. Far too many people are having their empires coming out unattended. That is a burden on all as an unattended empire is a yummy target and hard to post for.

People are being accepted into the fed that do not have communications with other members. Communications is a must, because you have to know if it is safe to come out or if someone else is preparing to come out.

Someone even had the gall to complain about DP’ing allies and freiends. How do you think we get you empire in when it is out unattended? I didn’t get to my current planet count by being stupid, greedy, and attacking everything that moves. I got there by playing smart. I collect retals against those that hit my main and then use them. I gain planets everyday by Dp’ing others and hitting NPC’s. I make arrangements to get back in when I am out. Yeah, I will take a shot at someone I don’t know if a really yummy opportunity presents itself, but I also realize that I am not the only one in the fed and try to make sure everyone is covered and gets a chance.

If things don’t change I might just take someone up on one of the offers I have been getting to move to another fed, or I might just have to start my own. I didn’t work this hard and put in this many hours in the game to watch it get taken away because the team mates I have helped are not there for me when I need it, and that is exactly how both Laila and I feel right now. This is not directed at everyone, just the few, and they know who they are.

Anyway, enough said, I have to get ready to teach this other class now, since at work I am also part of a team and willing to pitch in when I can for the good of that team.

A nice Sunday morning

Last night I stayed up pretty late watching people go out and fight while supplying OP and waited until some of my artifacts came alive so I could get some planets to add to my system.

As soon as I did that I went ahead and logged off and then fell asleep on the couch. I woke up early this morning and then chatted with Laila and some other freinds.

Judy and Carlos came down and were all ready for church so I took a quick shower and said my good nights to Laila and my friends and off to church we went.

Today was the second Sunday of Easter. The first reading was Acts 5:12-16. The second reading was Revelations 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 and the Gospel was John 20:19-31. Father Cholo gave the mass and said that Father Vano had resigned as pastor due to health reasons. He did not elaborate and I will pray for his health. They have not announced a new pastor yet. The link to revelations is broken by the way.

Anyway the service today was about Jesus return and how Thomas didn’t believe Jesus had visited. Anyway when we got to the part of the mass where you greet everyone I ran into one of my old shipmates, his wife and grand daughter. We talked for a while and it was great running into an old buddy. Also their grand daughter was the cutest thing, about a year old, and very well behaved.

After that I asked the kids where they wanted to go for breakfast and they picked Jack-in-the-Box so we got breakfast sandwiches and came home.

Now I am updating the blog, posting outpost, and I think I will lay down for a bit. I also have to decide what to make for dinner. Anyway, I guess that is about it for the day. Time to get this posted and get going with relaxation time.

A short vacation from blogging

Sorry for not blogging over the weekend but I had a really busy weekend and never got around to even logging onto the blog. This weekend was the weekend to get caught up on a few things around the house and also finally sort through tons of junk mail to see what was important and what is not.

When I got home from my last trip I went through all the mail and got all the bills out of the stack and paid them, but I had tons of credit card offers, catalogs, and various other junk that I never took the time to sort through.

I finally got to it since time to figure out the taxes is here and I wanted to get all that paperwork found and sorted out. Now I just have to get it organized into a nice little packet and then figure out the best way to file them.

Also Saturday was grocery day and after staying up too late on Friday I kind of slept in on Saturday getting a little bit of a slow start to the day. I also did laundry on Saturday and we worked on cleaning up the kitchen and all.

I stayed up again too late on Saturday night but did get up in time for church. I didn’t bring the bulletin so I won’t post links to the scriptures but the mass was one the one where the lady was going to be stoned for adultery and Jesus said “Let those without sin cast the first stone.” The priest then kind of made the gospel go along the lines of trying to solve a few things that have been going on at our parish. There are several committees that have been fighting for power and as a result it has been causing a lot of conflict.

He basically related everything to the hand. The hand has five fingers of various sizes and none are the same. Some you use differently depending on what you are trying to pick up or grab. If you lose one by it being lost or injured you will not be able to do certain things. It kind of goes along with anything you do in life or family. Everyone has their position and it takes the group or unit to get things done. A weak person, committee, teammate, or family member drags the entire unit down.

He even put it directly towards our Filipino members, our church is mainly Filipino, and said that they have the ability to take a smoothly running organization and by struggling to be the most important and recognized person cause the organization to splinter. He then went on t talk about how if your neighbor buys a car, that the next neighbor will go out and get a better car to show they are more well off. He said we should live within our means and not worry about what others have and own.

He even made a joke about the Gospel saying, “Those without sin cast the first stone” and whack a stone sails by his head and he says “ok, mom”.

Anyway after church the kids wanted to come home and that was when I decided to go through all the paperwork stuff. It took a while but I got through the stack and I made it smaller, though I still have to go through a stack of stuff to get all the tax stuff ready which I will do today or tomorrow.

I was still playing Unification Wars, but was kind of just running back and forth monitoring what was going on every few minutes or so, rather than sitting continually behind the screen. I also got my clothes ironed for the week and all, I had forgotten about some clothes in the dryer, so I had to iron stuff.

Later Laila woke up and then I went ahead and concentrated more on the game and all the chats on the screen. We have various chats set up for the various federations we are allied with and so I have several chat windows up simultaneously. It is good because we can share ideas and make new friends. We can also find out about people and get opinions on things.

Also we have our own federation IRC chat where we work with team members. It is really good because once someone gets kicked out or quits they can be banned. There has been a lot of stuff going on in the federation and our sister federation. Our federation is full and our sister federation has open slots. They have been inviting people into their federation so we can get a look at them and last night one of the most arrogant people I have ever seen in the chat came in and all he did was tell us how this wasn’t good enough, and pretty much slammed us on our choice of ships and all.

Laila jumped on him quick as did Sgt Joe. The guy told us our OP was not good and so Sgt Joe went ahead and listed his battles and results including where he has beat this guy. Anyway, the guy got booted and I hope that others like him will not keep appearing in the federations. It goes along with the hand thing, everyone has a role to play, and that guy was destructive.

We have a couple more like that in our federation, but I think that they might be leaving soon. If they don’t I fear that they will drive some of our players away. To me image is important and I carry the flag of my federation with pride. To me the allies of our allies are also folks to be looked after and not attacked as well as personal allies of our federation mates. We have a few wild cannons that attack and then look at who they hit. They have been hitting allies and friends of allies, and that is not right and has no place in warfare.

There are plenty of NPC’s and people that would like you help them into protection to get your planet count up. I see no benefit in hitting someone’s main system and taking away all their planets unless they are doing it to you or others. Then I feel you are justified in doing it.

If you just attack to prove you can do it then you are nothing more like the folks that are causing all the problems by blowing themselves up in market places and all. It serves no purpose other than to make enemies.

Anyway, now that I have that off my chest, Laila is now starting to have the same problem she had with PLDT happening with her Bayantel. Recently her bandwidth has dropped way down and though their customer service is great the guy checking her lines was able to point directly back to the servers. They too have oversold their bandwidth, but no that she does have a ticket and has had her lines checked hopefully they will get her taken care of.

I stayed up way too late last night trying to get my time reset. It is not cool having to stay up until 1 AM and then trying to get up at 5:15 AM. Maybe if I were a little younger, so I am going to try and move up a little and go out earlier in the evening.

Also Laila as she always does has now learned another section of the game that will produce planets without having to fight for them. She now makes and uses her own artifacts and she is going to teach me how tonight. So now I will start doing that in addition to fighting. But now it will be more like protecting them.

Well time to get ready to get some work done. Have a great day and a great week.