Old Grognard

I, jokingly, commented on a Traveller session that Erin participated that the Aslan player's pronunciation of Trokh (Aslan primary language) was atrocious.

I said he had an atrocious accent, riffing on the old meme of someone not being able to speak French well because of their accent.

It hits me that I've been doing Traveller a LOT longer than they have.

I knew it was Trokh without looking it up.  Just as I know the most common Vargr language is Gvegh.

I started in 1979 with little black books and kept up with it through MegaTraveller.

I translated both LBB Traveller and Megatraveller to GURPS 3e.

Then GURPS: Traveller.

Then translating that into 4e.

Then GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars.

I corresponded with Loren K Wiseman when he was still Traveller line editor at SJGames.

I have watched the setting develop from nothing to the crunchy mass today.

I have not done much with Mongoose's version of the rules.

But the setting remains the same.

It amuses me that the Aslan's player has no idea who I am or how long I've been at it when they replied.

But I'm only teasing.  It sounded like he's got the essence of being an Aslan male in command from listening to the session.

Tricking The Technology

The internet is the phone here.  That's true most everywhere now.

When the power goes out, the internet provider provided box has a battery to make sure we can still call out.

That battery lasts for days.

But the box kills the internet after 15 minutes.

So we have the battery box plugged into a battery backup to make it think the power is still on so we retain internet.

This is paired with UPS's on the routers.

We got almost 2 hours of internet with a dying UPS.

I'd like to upgrade that capability.  I'd love to get 24 hours of up time without touching the generator.

Historocity

The 2023 version of The Three Musketeers (Part 1, D'Artagnon) is set in 1625.

There sure are a lot of flintlocks in 1625 France.

Even worse than on a c1600 Dutch privateer trading vessel (cough cough Shogun).

The weaponry in this new version of Dumas' work is decidedly 18th century, and so is the costuming!

There are ample paintings of many of the historical figures to guide the filmmakers...  But, nah!

17th century costuming is... elaborate (and expensive).

Even so, they missed on how elaborate the 18th century stuff was as well.  The 1988 version of Dangerous Liaisons is an excellent example of getting the costuming right.

But no, let's have everyone dress like a commoner from a century too late.

When Richard Lester does a better job with weapons and costumes...

But with that out of the way, was it any good?

I cannot say if the new version is closer to the book or not; it's been too long since I've read it.

I will say it was a good version of the story.  I enjoyed it a lot.

Eva Green did well as Milady.  Francois Civil was a decent D'Artagnon and Vincent Cassel a solid Athos.  Aramis and Porthos are present, but not prominent.

I liked it, and look forward to seeing part 2.

Rebuilding

The tried and true APC BX1500G battery backup lasted for two hours when the power went out on Thursday.

It appeared to come back to life on Friday but, alas, on Sunday it shut off and displayed error code F02.

I cycled the power and it appeared fine until early this morning.

Same F02 code at 0330, 0430 and 0500.

Time for something different.

We've had the APC for years and years.  I've replaced the batteries three times, the first time in 2013!

Wal Mart opened at 0600, and I got a replacement.

So far, this is our only casualty from the storm.

Branch Color

According to this page, purple is fair game for the magic branch in 1899.

I had planned to have the magic branch be purple with silver piping.  But reconsidered.

The piping color is the color of the branch they're assigned to.

Purple with yellow (yellow orange if you wanna get technical) for cavalry.

Purple with white for infantry.

Purple with red for artillery.

Purple with cadet gray for commissary.

Purple with emerald green for hospital/medical.

Purple with crimson for ordnance.

Purple with buff for quartermaster.

Purple with black for signal corps.

Branch insignia are a lightning bolt crossed with a star tipped wand.

There are a bewildering array of non-commissioned officer ranks that appear to be outside the chain of command, like specialist or tech ranks.

Commissary sergeant is a thing.

There were still color sergeants in the US Army in 1899.

Step Into The Light Already

Today is Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday.

You can quit now, Jimmy.

What Good Has Come From Them

Extortion and greed are all I see when I hear "union" and I fail to see any benefit to having them around.

As a customer of the places they extort, all I see is increased cost and decreased quality.

USW 8888 got a large raise and a 5-year contract in 2022; now we're hearing that they didn't do a significant amount of welding correctly.

Who won there?

The people who unload the ships are on strike on the east coast.

Who, besides themselves, is this helping?

They want MORE and can extort the entire nation to get it.

They're fucking everyone else.

Then their leadership donates to the Dems and...

Just not seeing the upside to unions for anyone not actually in one.

Triple this for anyone in a public employee union like teachers and cops.  Nowhere is the corrosive effect of union membership more visible.

Done Fucked Up

I noticed right away that Chief Hagen had not read an important part of 870.044.  That'd be the reference, "pursuant to s. 870.043.

He quotes most of 870.044...

Title XLVI CRIMES

Chapter 870 AFFRAYS; RIOTS; ROUTS; UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLIES

SECTION 044Automatic emergency measures.

---

870.044 Automatic emergency measures.—Whenever the public official declares that a state of emergency exists, pursuant to s. 870.043, the following acts shall be prohibited during the period of said emergency throughout the jurisdiction:

(1) The sale of, or offer to sell, with or without consideration, any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(2) The intentional display, after the emergency is declared, by or in any store or shop of any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(3) The intentional possession in a public place of a firearm by any person, except a duly authorized law enforcement official or person in military service acting in the official performance of her or his duty.

Nothing contained in this chapter shall be construed to authorize the seizure, taking, or confiscation of firearms that are lawfully possessed, unless a person is engaged in a criminal act.

History.—ss. 4, 5, ch. 70-990; s. 1401, ch. 97-102; s. 2, ch. 2006-100.

That part I've highlighted is important (h/t Erin).  But far more important is what 870.043 says about WHEN you can evoke 870.044!

Title XLVI CRIMES

Chapter 870 AFFRAYS; RIOTS; ROUTS; UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLIES

SECTION 043Declaration of emergency.

---

870.043 Declaration of emergency.—Whenever the sheriff or designated city official determines that there has been an act of violence or a flagrant and substantial defiance of, or resistance to, a lawful exercise of public authority and that, on account thereof, there is reason to believe that there exists a clear and present danger of a riot or other general public disorder, widespread disobedience of the law, and substantial injury to persons or to property, all of which constitute an imminent threat to public peace or order and to the general welfare of the jurisdiction affected or a part or parts thereof, he or she may declare that a state of emergency exists within that jurisdiction or any part or parts thereof.

History.—s. 3, ch. 70-990; s. 1400, ch. 97-102.

Where's the riot, Chief?  870.044 isn't for just any emergency, it's for a specific kind of emergency.  More along the lines of reining in the KKK or "mostly peaceful" protesting.

I think Donald has stepped in it here.  GOA-Florida is on it and we have a statute that lets us sue government busybodies who get gun stuff wrong.  They don't even get to hide behind their office.

FFS, I'm not even a lawyer and I keep discovering just how ignorant cops and elected officials are about the law. 

Mystery Prepping

There are things we do to get ready for hurricanes that confuse my father in law.

I, belatedly, bought 100 lb. of ice for our two big coolers.

He was all, "what do we need that for?" when we had Marv's generator charging up the fridges.

He's not getting that the point of laying in this stuff is to have it when you need it.

Getting it before you need it is how you have it when you need it, because everyone else will be realizing they need it at about the same time.

So we get ice.

So we stock up on insulin.

So we have several days of shelf stable grub.

So we have jugs and bottles of potable water.

So we have ammo and loaded magazines.

So we top up all the fuel containers.

You might not get the luxury of getting more indefinitely.

But father in law's disconnect really hit when we tossed the ice, unused.

"Why did you buy all that if you weren't going to use it?"

Well, cooler #1 all melted because you didn't check to see if the lid was secure.

Cooler #2 didn't get cleaned before ice got put into it because my helper just started dumping ice...

I would have used the ice in those coolers to mix drinks if some simple precautions were taken!

Like A Scorpion It's My Nature

I did it again...

A female friend was venting and I was trying to fix the problem.

Ladies.

Don't bring us a problem you don't want solved.

Solving problems is what men do.

We wait for the opportunity, it's the main thing we bring to the partnership.

Don't get mad at us.

Don't say shit like, "now do you see why we're angry all the time from keeping shit bottled up?"

Because I'm going to reply with something like, "I figured you'd be happy getting the problem fixed!"

We are baffled by the idea that you just want to vent about a problem and leave it unresolved as long as someone will listen to the complaint and be sympathetic.

We're showing sympathy, we're offering to fix it.

I know you know how I respond to hearing about the problems of people I dislike.

It's isn't an offer to fix it, is it?

Neat!

I don't shotgun much so this innovation slipped past me.

Interia action:

Nifty.

Simple and elegant.

The place that introduced me to the idea was complaining about the price of such guns, so they must be expensive too.

Another Old West Gunwriter Passes

Phil Spangenberger has left the chat.

2024 has been rough on the people who wrote about cowboy guns.

Mike Venturino was just a bit ago, back in June.

You Can Tell A Democrat Is In Office

Information is trickling out about how bad Helene hit Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

Here's some footage from Erwin, TN.

That's pretty bad.

This storm and its effects would be 24/7 front page on all the news web sites if a Republican was president.

I remember Katrina coverage and lack of Ian coverage and now, lack of Helene coverage.

Well, I guess the less the press covers it the faster and more fully the area recovers.

You Only Get Points If It's An Actual Problem

 The GURPS Basic Set Vol 1: Characters, on page 144 says:

Missing Digit  

-2 or -5 points

You are missing a finger or thumb.

Missing Finger: Gives -1 DX with that hand (only). -2 points.

Missing Thumb: Gives -5 DX with that hand (only). -5 points.

I know a couple of people missing a finger who don't appear to be affected by it at all.

Some races are depicted with fewer fingers than humans and aren't given this disad.

It hit me that if it's not affecting you, you don't rate the points even if you don't have a finger where it should be!

Take the -1 for the quirk and make note your left pinky is gone.  No DX penalty, but you might get some social stuff from people going, "where's your pinky?"

I've met a couple of people who are REALLY freaked out by a missing digit too.  They were physically sick from the person who was missing that right ring finger.  <-- That missing finger is a warning about lathes and jewelry, by the way.

Prep Odds

No, we did not have a generator.  Harvey has lived her for 39 years and I for 27, we've never needed one.

We've wanted one, but the odds of NEEDING one were still quite low.

Prolly going to buy my buddy's so he can upgrade though.

I've never owned a rain gauge.  I just never had even idle curiosity about how much it rained.  Plus I'd probably forget to check/reset it making it useless.

We forgot to load up on ice this round, that was a mistake.  Colored by the lack of likely direct effect (accurate forecast) and a history of the power staying on; we got complacent.

Harvey thinks she was awakened by someone trying the front door at 0430 Friday.

I was just settling for bed, so hopefully she was hearing me.

When I was sitting out in Moxie charging phones and USB battery packs between 1200 and 0400 I did see a lot of people walking around the neighborhood.  It didn't look nefarious, mostly looking curious about how the area had fared.

Yes, I had a gun on me.  No, it was not a pistol.

Bless You Mr Carrier!

At 2:30p we had the generator my buddy graciously loaned me hooked up and running the fridge.

At 5:30p we got a notice from the power company to not expect restoration of service until 11:59 Sunday evening.

There had been trucks in our neighborhood all day, so I figured that we wouldn't have to wait that long, but Harvey decided to plan for the worst and knowing that another day of this without power would kill Harvey's mom...  We started looking for hotels that still had vacancies.  None.

We immediately started moving Harvey's mom down here where the power is and moved the unused window AC unit with her.

A couple extra fans and the window unit in the kitchen window made a huge difference in comfort, even if it was small in measurable temperature.  Humidity reduction, YO!

Pretty much the moment we got her situated...  The power came back on.

7:30p today, you will note, is literally days before the expected restoration.

27-1/2 hours without power.

I know people who've gone much longer, but this is our personal record.

It's verra nice to have the electrons flowing again.

The Waiting Is All

Got a buddy coming down from Ocala with his generator! 

Except for the power being out, we're doing great. 

Power will prolly be restored the second he pulls into the driveway.

We got off light. 

I wish I'd thought of throwing my air mattress into the back of Moxie last night instead of this morning!  Would've been a lot cooler.

Sitting In The Dark

Something that comes to mind, sitting here in the dark is how few lumens you really need on your weapon light when your eyes are acclimated to the dark. 

Gunwriters keep telling us we need more, but they're going from a well lit space to dark and back in short order at their gun schools.

I don't think they've really thought this through while listening to law enforcement biased trainers.

This Sucks

It could, of course, be much worse.

Power has been off since 4pm and they have a message about conditions being unsafe for the linemen.

I'll wait, I want them to go home safe.

But it sucks to sit in the dark without so many amenities.

Everyone Knows It's Windy

 

It's kinda brisk out there.  Got a good gust a bit ago and the power cut out for about a minute.

A lot like Irma, in fact.

Huge

 

We're under it already.

Waves of off and on rain until the winds get here tomorrow morning.

That House Rule Is Looking Better.

A while back I decided to change the damage of .40 S&W from 2d+2 pi+ to 2d pi+ because .40 S&W just didn't seem to outperform 9x19 or .45 at all.

Running the numbers for 10mm underscores my wisdom.

3d-1 pi+ of 10mm ACP ball will do 2-17 raw damage with an average of 9 which will become 3-26 points (avg 14) to the target's hit points.  Hollow points get upped to 3d-1(0.5) pi++ which takes the same raw damage to 2-32 points delivered (17 average).

As written, .40 S&W ball does 4-14 raw (avg 9) doing 6-21 (avg 13) once the bullet size mod is applied.  Hollow points up that to 2d+2(0.5) pi++ for 6-26 (avg 16).

As I've modified .40 S&W 2d pi+ does 2-12 raw (avg 7) with ball ammo delivering 3-18 (avg 10) after size mod.  Hollow points do 2d(0.5) pi++ for 2-22 (avg 12).  <-- This is identical to .45 ACP, which is how the ballistics gel and FBI testing looks.

Stalking Turtle

Our favorite local weather personality, Dennis Phillips, calls hurricanes "stalking turtles" because of how slow they come on.

Track is a bit West of last post, which is good for me in SW Pasco.

To show how large this thing is, though, the first rain band just whipped over us.

Helene is going to cover the entire Eastern Gulf and be messing with all of West coast Florida.

Rain predictions are fairly light for this system, which is excellent news because the storm surge is expected to be atrocious.  Going to be a lot of flooding in lower areas than me.  West of US19 is going to be hurting.

When I moved down here... 27 years ago almost to the day, West of 19 was called "the wrong side of 19" because of the flooding issue.  And they let it get built up.

We'll see how they fared in 48 hours.

1700 Update:

I'm Curious

I'm not sure I'm $100 curious, but what's a Pelican case running nowadays?

2nd Amendment Bourbon.

I've never heard of this brand, but the box caught my eye.

Tracking

We're going to get strong tropical storm level gusts most likely.

The local weather guy is going all in on the doom and gloom of losing electricity.

I hope not.  We've been very lucky in that regard with storms, so eyes crossed that it continues.

Non-Subjective

We can quote numbers all day, but they're meaningless unless we have them in GURPS terms!

1911 in .45 ACP does 2d pi+, out to 150/1,600 weighing 2.8/0.5 lb. with 7+1 shots and Rcl 3.

In 10mm it does 3d-1 pi+, out to 290/2,300 weighing 2.8/0.4 lb. with 8+1 shots and Rcl 4.

2d pi+ will do an average of 7 points of raw damage and deal 10 points of damage to the torso.

3d-1 pi+ will average 9 points of raw damage and deal 13 points of damage.

More damage, more range, lighter magazines, more shots... WIN!

But...

Skill 15 shooter, Acc 2, 7 yards.  No aim, so I don't know why I mentioned the acc...

-3 for the range so 12 or less to hit.  Average roll of 10 gives 1 shot hitting out of three for both guns.  10mm still in the lead.

A 9 gives 2 hits with .45 and a 6 gives 3 hits.

10mm needs an 8 for two hits and a 4 for three.

That recoil number be serious, yo.

Both have a 74.07% chance to land the first round.

So a 1911, in this case has a 9.25% chance at all three rounds, and a 37.5% chance for 2.

10mm has 1.38% for all three and just 25.92% for 2.

Three hits with .45 does more damage (30 average) than two hits of 10mm (26 average).

But wait!  There's MORE!

.40 S&W does 2d pi+ too.  It's recoil number is 2.

It's going to hit with one round on a 12 or less (same 74.07%), two rounds on a 10 (50%) or less and all three on an 8 or less (25.92%).  10mm Kurz gets all three rounds for the same die roll as .40 S&W Long gets just two.  3x2d pi+ > 2x3d-1 pi+  Oh, the .40 S&W gun is going to be lighter, usually with the same capacity.

Still more!

9x19mm does 2d+2 pi.  Average hit is 9 raw points and 9 damage.  It's recoil is also 2, so the same chances to hit as .40 S&W but a bit less damage.  9, 18 and 27 for one, two and three rounds respectively.  3x 2d+2 pi > 2x 3d-1 pi+.  9mm guns are even lighter than .40 S&W and usually carry more shots.

And this, at the end of the day, is why 10mm languished while 9mm is in just about everyone's holsters.  The slight edge in damage from .40 S&W is somewhat nullified by the extra number of shots the 9mm gets.

Then there's 9mm being a lot cheaper per shot.

I still WANT a 10mm ACP though.  Just gotta decide how long I wanna save for one and how sexy a beast it will be.  Colt Delta Elite and S&W 1076 lead the pack for sexy.  Rock Island and Glock lead on affordability.  Real insanity happens with finding a SIG P220 in 10mm.  But that way lies madness because I'd want to have a P220 in .38 Super too.  Peak insanity is finding a Bren 10.

I kind of am leaning at a 1911 in 10mm so I can have all three rounds that are "native" to the 1911.

Inducements

"We get the CIB!"

I get to drive the tank.

"We get to wear an infantry blue shoulder cord."

I get to fire the gun.

"We get our branch color in a surround of our branch insignia."

I don't have to walk anywhere.

Just sayin'...

Oh, and we finally got black berets like every other tanker.  Y'all just ticked off the Rangers.

The Paul Harrell Analysis

I believe this is the first of Paul's videos I ever watched and it was searching about the FBI shooting that lead me to it.

His absence is felt every day.

 

 

 

Knowing Exactly What I Want To Do

Making a Sergeant of Mages for Sabers and Sorcerers...

Christopher Harrington.

He's a movement college only mage.

I have to decide if I want to keep going with requiring a soul-jar athame to be a mage or not.

It makes the character a lot more complex using GURPS to keep track of my characters.

In many ways making a complete new system for "Old Magic" was easier than doing what I have in my head.

I have a clear vision.

Just writing it is easy, I want it to work in GURPS too.

I'll figure it out.

A mistake I made with the athame is it might require you to have on your person to keep your magery.  Need to double check and fix that, if so.

Mixed Blessing

We're now outside the cone of confusion now!

But the storm is supposed to be a lot bigger.

Going to be sporty West of US 19 in my AO.  I don't live there...