Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I think I'd like to finish the storage server article someday instead.
Cripes I'm pathetic.
Cripes I'm pathetic.
Writing something
- Thread starter Mercutio
- Start date
ddrueding
Fixture
Well, pathetic in an awesome sort of way... :mrgrn:
I just had time to read it, it is absolutely great!
Good luck on your new home, and I hope the storage article goes well, but I (and I'm sure others) will be harassing you for more of this later!
I just had time to read it, it is absolutely great!
Good luck on your new home, and I hope the storage article goes well, but I (and I'm sure others) will be harassing you for more of this later!
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm trying to write something but words aren't coming. I actually set aside time and... nothing. Poof. Argh.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
I feel the same way sometimes. You can't always pick a time to create. Sometimes you just have to wait until something inspires you. :idea:
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
good luck
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Sheet lightning rages across clear skies, followed instantly with thunder, snapping at least the organic parts of me to instinctual attention. The clouds and rain will come soon enough. RADAR and IR senses show the result of my exchange as a literal hole in atmosphere. AI calls it a 73.2% probability of a funnelhead as well. Maybe I'm not the only reason this compound isn't the safest place to be right now.
Adaptive camo does most of the job I need to keep myself out of any more rentacop sights. They're out now in force. 166 armed responders within 2km. Probably more with ceramics I can't feel. At least twelve medical responders. Better than Analysis predicted by almost 15%. Their ops plan obviously didn't include running without electronics. Too many of them are bunched into tiny little clusterfucks, and the rest are ranging outside anything that might've been called a cohesive formation.
Amateurs.
Speed, unfortunately, is not my forte. Speed and stealth together are even harder. My builders didn't see fit to make the 7.75 billion dollar man into Superman. Going in with guns blazing is clearly not best plan.
It doesn't leave me with much. Redmond hasn't been imaged in years. My GIS tells me that 85% of the structures I've been able to sense so far are newer than any data available, and there's at least a slim chance that one of the boy scouts running over the landscaped crests and streams right now will actually manage to stop me. Even putting that aside, 1449 seconds from now, another satellite will crest the horizon and I'll be back to begging AutoOps for oxygen again.
Tac pushes the nearest building into my ForeGround. No damage to the structure. No sign of movement. Good.
GIS shoves back with data suggesting TAC's candidate is most likely a storage structure for gardening or landscaping supplies, and therefore unsuitable on any level.
Tac spawns a secondary analysis of the accuracy of GIS sense aggregation techniques.
Were I fully human, I'd probably be sighing right now.
Instead I take a moment to maim the nearest guard.
My railgun fires a needle at .002c. At those speeds, the projectile loses molecular coherence due to simple friction the instant I pull its trigger. Aligned Iron Plasma passing through a human body at that kind of speed makes tiny, tiny holes. It's the resulting vibrational shock that actually ends up doing the killing most of the time.
Probably the wrong tool for the job.
Fortunately the streambed I've been calling home for the last 6 seconds has all the tiny little rocks a cybernetic assassin could ever hope to have.
The first pebble passes through the collateral ligaments in his knees, through both ACLs, and slightly downward, shattering his left tibia. I decide not to bother with the second pebble.
In the meantime, GIS has constructed a counter-analysis of the immediate tactical need for shelter based in part on topographical similarities to battles at Agincourt and Halidon. Clearly, some of my subsystems are being underutilized.
Fortunately for my orange-badged friend, the organic executive of myself has decided on a good way to spend several tens of seconds.
He's screaming for help. His bad luck that 44 other former combat assets within a 500m radius are doing the same thing, not to mention the fires, smoke, dust and gamma radiation.
Badge #RM233-2PRQQ-FR4RH-JP89H-46QYB: Ivannov, Evsei (ArtSource)
Apparently ArtSource has diversified somewhat in recent years.
Evsei does manage to fire off a burst as I slink toward him. At least, he tries. Pain, sadly, didn't improve Evsei's aim. Nor, according to chemosenses, his bladder control.
I skid to the ground beside him, keeping as low a profile as I can manage.
"Where," I growl in a deep bass nothing like my real voice, "is the Chairman?"
The Chairman himself has been a shadowy figure on the world stage ever since the day the rocks fell. International reprisals were made. They didn't accomplish much, initially. A city or maybe some European country would have an uprising, protesting Microsoft's actions or the accomodationist attitudes of its leaders, and suddenly it would be interdicted, alone in the world. No electronic communication, no in, no out. Shipping would stop, borders would close, and the rest of the world would silently forget.
Even in Europe, who thinks about Belgium every day?
Belgium descended to anarchy after 17 months without mass communications or shipping. The populace couldn't be fed. Some made it through guarded borders, to France or to Luxemborg, only to be detained by civil authorities. Most of them would vanish over night. Stories got out. Widespread rioting. Murders in broad daylight.
Then it was over. The news videos showed Mr. Gates was standing in a perfectly sculpted garden in Ypres announcing the availability of the Microsoft Planned European Autonomous Region, home to 3.6 million pioneering citizen-employees. No taxes, full healthcare, no living expenses. France, at that moment, had an unemployment rate approaching 23%. Not many of those seeking to emigrate asked why most of the residents they met had Lithuanian, not Belgian, surnames.
Adaptive camo does most of the job I need to keep myself out of any more rentacop sights. They're out now in force. 166 armed responders within 2km. Probably more with ceramics I can't feel. At least twelve medical responders. Better than Analysis predicted by almost 15%. Their ops plan obviously didn't include running without electronics. Too many of them are bunched into tiny little clusterfucks, and the rest are ranging outside anything that might've been called a cohesive formation.
Amateurs.
Speed, unfortunately, is not my forte. Speed and stealth together are even harder. My builders didn't see fit to make the 7.75 billion dollar man into Superman. Going in with guns blazing is clearly not best plan.
It doesn't leave me with much. Redmond hasn't been imaged in years. My GIS tells me that 85% of the structures I've been able to sense so far are newer than any data available, and there's at least a slim chance that one of the boy scouts running over the landscaped crests and streams right now will actually manage to stop me. Even putting that aside, 1449 seconds from now, another satellite will crest the horizon and I'll be back to begging AutoOps for oxygen again.
Tac pushes the nearest building into my ForeGround. No damage to the structure. No sign of movement. Good.
GIS shoves back with data suggesting TAC's candidate is most likely a storage structure for gardening or landscaping supplies, and therefore unsuitable on any level.
Tac spawns a secondary analysis of the accuracy of GIS sense aggregation techniques.
Were I fully human, I'd probably be sighing right now.
Instead I take a moment to maim the nearest guard.
My railgun fires a needle at .002c. At those speeds, the projectile loses molecular coherence due to simple friction the instant I pull its trigger. Aligned Iron Plasma passing through a human body at that kind of speed makes tiny, tiny holes. It's the resulting vibrational shock that actually ends up doing the killing most of the time.
Probably the wrong tool for the job.
Fortunately the streambed I've been calling home for the last 6 seconds has all the tiny little rocks a cybernetic assassin could ever hope to have.
The first pebble passes through the collateral ligaments in his knees, through both ACLs, and slightly downward, shattering his left tibia. I decide not to bother with the second pebble.
In the meantime, GIS has constructed a counter-analysis of the immediate tactical need for shelter based in part on topographical similarities to battles at Agincourt and Halidon. Clearly, some of my subsystems are being underutilized.
Fortunately for my orange-badged friend, the organic executive of myself has decided on a good way to spend several tens of seconds.
He's screaming for help. His bad luck that 44 other former combat assets within a 500m radius are doing the same thing, not to mention the fires, smoke, dust and gamma radiation.
Badge #RM233-2PRQQ-FR4RH-JP89H-46QYB: Ivannov, Evsei (ArtSource)
Apparently ArtSource has diversified somewhat in recent years.
Evsei does manage to fire off a burst as I slink toward him. At least, he tries. Pain, sadly, didn't improve Evsei's aim. Nor, according to chemosenses, his bladder control.
I skid to the ground beside him, keeping as low a profile as I can manage.
"Where," I growl in a deep bass nothing like my real voice, "is the Chairman?"
The Chairman himself has been a shadowy figure on the world stage ever since the day the rocks fell. International reprisals were made. They didn't accomplish much, initially. A city or maybe some European country would have an uprising, protesting Microsoft's actions or the accomodationist attitudes of its leaders, and suddenly it would be interdicted, alone in the world. No electronic communication, no in, no out. Shipping would stop, borders would close, and the rest of the world would silently forget.
Even in Europe, who thinks about Belgium every day?
Belgium descended to anarchy after 17 months without mass communications or shipping. The populace couldn't be fed. Some made it through guarded borders, to France or to Luxemborg, only to be detained by civil authorities. Most of them would vanish over night. Stories got out. Widespread rioting. Murders in broad daylight.
Then it was over. The news videos showed Mr. Gates was standing in a perfectly sculpted garden in Ypres announcing the availability of the Microsoft Planned European Autonomous Region, home to 3.6 million pioneering citizen-employees. No taxes, full healthcare, no living expenses. France, at that moment, had an unemployment rate approaching 23%. Not many of those seeking to emigrate asked why most of the residents they met had Lithuanian, not Belgian, surnames.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm not terribly satisfied with it, and that little bit of text took more than two hours to hit a page. 
It's easier when I write for an audience of "me".
It's easier when I write for an audience of "me".
ddrueding
Fixture
Well, I'm still quite satisfied An author who is his own toughest critic produces the best stuff. Mixing backstory/plot in with the action is a great way to maintain the pace of the piece.
An author who is his own toughest critic produces the best stuff. Mixing backstory/plot in with the action is a great way to maintain the pace of the piece.
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
AAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh......That made my day :mrgrn:
Way to go Merc!
I like it.
Way to go Merc!
I like it.
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Jan Kivar said:
:mrgrn:
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Hmmm, of the stories I've read on the net, I'll rank this as second best, after BOFH.
A bit more , and it'll be even
Nice work Merc, gimme moooooooorrrre!
A bit more , and it'll be even
Nice work Merc, gimme moooooooorrrre!
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Jan Kivar said:
It's a Windows 2000AS key. Yes, it's valid.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
i thought it looked familiar, same syntax as a MS product key. I didnt bother to check its authenticity.
e_dawg
Storage Freak
Can't wait for the next one...
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Cardiac arrest isn't just fun and games. Sure, some people are engineered to survive it. Evsai was not one of them. We had barely 5.31 seconds to get to know one another, but even at that the combination of pulse change and eye dilation told me that he didn't know.
Even without billions of dollars worth of nanoelectronic sensors I know that I'm not likely to find anyone with a blue badge and enough security clearance out here to actually find Gates. But a sealed operation like this - people talk. There should at least be rumors.
It shouldn't be possible to overwhelm my sensory networks. My operative design document specified my capabilities as complete real-time awareness of all activity within 500 meters of my location. Hundreds of the best engineers in the world tried their best to do just that. But state-of-the-art sometimes means "defective" too, and my organic components are spending far, far too much time doing threat assesment and categorization while my nanoelectronics spend their time identifying the trajectory and composition of individual bullets. Who knew that being surrounded by armed hostiles on flat, open terrain would be one of my weak points?
Fortunately, getting out of Dodge isn't so tough when the Crack Security Squads can't add eye-melting flash with mushroom cloud to equal no functioning electronics. Lacking basic comms and support electronics, Tac AI pegs each security team as 61.333% likely to engage any other team with lethal force.
That's why contractors make the big bucks.
I first saw service in Panama. I mean, the first service I'm still aware of. My brain has been scrubbed at least twice. Kind of like "the big bang". I know it happened but I can't tell what came before. But Panama was my first service. Not the canal - the canal belonged to the Corporate-State with the Death-Ray satellites. Not much could be done about that. No, we were sent in to recover assests belonging to a Biotech company called Bellorophon AG.
There were 33 of us initially. We were human then. Meat. Barely upgraded organic senses, muscles made dense and fast with drugs rather than plastics. We had "co-processors" then, instead of a neural network.
What I remember most from that time was how bad the environmental seals were between meat and tech... sand in the raw socket where my navel was hurt more than any bullet I've ever felt.
But, 33 of us. There had been 50 in the beginning. A few failed before they got far enough along in the program - usually psychotic. Sometimes schizoid. Only one hardware failure though. It was very reassuring at the time.
Intel at the time had it that these guys were barking up several very interesting lines of research that conincided nicely with the aims of our program. We never got much in the way of detail, only that someone higher up the foodchain wanted what these guys had.
So 31 augmented humans hit the shores of this little island not far from the coast of Panama, to find what we could find. One more ran comms remotely, another ran the show with overall tac command.
It was a cakewalk. No special weapons - AR17s mostly. Each three man team had its objective in 70% of the time projected by Ops. As a first test it was flying colors. Frogman insertion off a submarine. Our first time out in the world. We'd had two years apiece in the program by then. We turned 406 people into 28 in just over 55 minutes. And it was BORING. Long periods of silent patrol and micro-seconds of action.
Even though it's in the meat part of my brain I will never forget Swayne, who showed us all what we could do. He was a crazy motherfucker, riding the edge of a psychosis red-line every day he was in the program. After our second fire-fight with Bellorophon's Security forces he just dropped his gun. We were walking through a cloud of blood and smoke and burning jungle and he just dropped it.
He drew a Kabar. Who the hell knew how he got it - it wasn't standard issue - and advanced ahead of Abraham - our point man. Yeah, he probably lost it, but he was keeping proper form and nobody had the stones just that second to shoot him for insubordination.
So we advanced on the helipad that was our objective. It wasn't supposed to be guarded, but it was. Swayne didn't even choke up. He rushed them. Right into a hail of small-arms fire; even a mongoloid could've heard him at that point. Even a mongoloid would've found something solid to crouch behind, too.
But that's when he did it. I watch his lefted hand swoop in front of his chest, a blur, and I realized that he had caught a bullet.
The kind of catching little kids do with baseballs, not the kind that leads to pain and gangrene.
Oh, he was hit a couple of times too - I watched his left shoulder rip and splatter and a second shot pass through his thigh, but through it all he managed to duck, dodge or catch anything that might've been capable of even incapacitating him. He just didn't care any more.
I didn't even bother to cover him.
When he finally got close enough to bring a knife to a gunfight it was even less pretty; 20cm of steel flashed five times for each of the three shots those five guards collectively managed to get off.
I watched Swayne's left hand explode into a spray of blood as he thrust his knife under the jaw of the last guard.
And I watched him turn to us, grinning and giggling, batshit-fucking-loco, the round his palm didn't stop clenched firmly in his teeth.
Even without billions of dollars worth of nanoelectronic sensors I know that I'm not likely to find anyone with a blue badge and enough security clearance out here to actually find Gates. But a sealed operation like this - people talk. There should at least be rumors.
It shouldn't be possible to overwhelm my sensory networks. My operative design document specified my capabilities as complete real-time awareness of all activity within 500 meters of my location. Hundreds of the best engineers in the world tried their best to do just that. But state-of-the-art sometimes means "defective" too, and my organic components are spending far, far too much time doing threat assesment and categorization while my nanoelectronics spend their time identifying the trajectory and composition of individual bullets. Who knew that being surrounded by armed hostiles on flat, open terrain would be one of my weak points?
Fortunately, getting out of Dodge isn't so tough when the Crack Security Squads can't add eye-melting flash with mushroom cloud to equal no functioning electronics. Lacking basic comms and support electronics, Tac AI pegs each security team as 61.333% likely to engage any other team with lethal force.
That's why contractors make the big bucks.
I first saw service in Panama. I mean, the first service I'm still aware of. My brain has been scrubbed at least twice. Kind of like "the big bang". I know it happened but I can't tell what came before. But Panama was my first service. Not the canal - the canal belonged to the Corporate-State with the Death-Ray satellites. Not much could be done about that. No, we were sent in to recover assests belonging to a Biotech company called Bellorophon AG.
There were 33 of us initially. We were human then. Meat. Barely upgraded organic senses, muscles made dense and fast with drugs rather than plastics. We had "co-processors" then, instead of a neural network.
What I remember most from that time was how bad the environmental seals were between meat and tech... sand in the raw socket where my navel was hurt more than any bullet I've ever felt.
But, 33 of us. There had been 50 in the beginning. A few failed before they got far enough along in the program - usually psychotic. Sometimes schizoid. Only one hardware failure though. It was very reassuring at the time.
Intel at the time had it that these guys were barking up several very interesting lines of research that conincided nicely with the aims of our program. We never got much in the way of detail, only that someone higher up the foodchain wanted what these guys had.
So 31 augmented humans hit the shores of this little island not far from the coast of Panama, to find what we could find. One more ran comms remotely, another ran the show with overall tac command.
It was a cakewalk. No special weapons - AR17s mostly. Each three man team had its objective in 70% of the time projected by Ops. As a first test it was flying colors. Frogman insertion off a submarine. Our first time out in the world. We'd had two years apiece in the program by then. We turned 406 people into 28 in just over 55 minutes. And it was BORING. Long periods of silent patrol and micro-seconds of action.
Even though it's in the meat part of my brain I will never forget Swayne, who showed us all what we could do. He was a crazy motherfucker, riding the edge of a psychosis red-line every day he was in the program. After our second fire-fight with Bellorophon's Security forces he just dropped his gun. We were walking through a cloud of blood and smoke and burning jungle and he just dropped it.
He drew a Kabar. Who the hell knew how he got it - it wasn't standard issue - and advanced ahead of Abraham - our point man. Yeah, he probably lost it, but he was keeping proper form and nobody had the stones just that second to shoot him for insubordination.
So we advanced on the helipad that was our objective. It wasn't supposed to be guarded, but it was. Swayne didn't even choke up. He rushed them. Right into a hail of small-arms fire; even a mongoloid could've heard him at that point. Even a mongoloid would've found something solid to crouch behind, too.
But that's when he did it. I watch his lefted hand swoop in front of his chest, a blur, and I realized that he had caught a bullet.
The kind of catching little kids do with baseballs, not the kind that leads to pain and gangrene.
Oh, he was hit a couple of times too - I watched his left shoulder rip and splatter and a second shot pass through his thigh, but through it all he managed to duck, dodge or catch anything that might've been capable of even incapacitating him. He just didn't care any more.
I didn't even bother to cover him.
When he finally got close enough to bring a knife to a gunfight it was even less pretty; 20cm of steel flashed five times for each of the three shots those five guards collectively managed to get off.
I watched Swayne's left hand explode into a spray of blood as he thrust his knife under the jaw of the last guard.
And I watched him turn to us, grinning and giggling, batshit-fucking-loco, the round his palm didn't stop clenched firmly in his teeth.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Inspirational reading:
Try The Baen Free Library.
I recommend 1632 (the author's wife is actually someone I've taught in a class)
or
On Basilisk Station
or
A Hymn Before Battle
Try The Baen Free Library.
I recommend 1632 (the author's wife is actually someone I've taught in a class)
or
On Basilisk Station
or
A Hymn Before Battle
Ah, Honor Harrington. the current love of my sci-fi life.
On Basilisk Station. Baen has also released most of their back catalogue (about 40 books) in various e-formats on one CD--search for Honorverse. It includes the first 9 or 10 Honor Harrington novels.
If you can't find it (or can't be bothered Googling) I can make it available on my site. Oh, it's free and legal. Jim Baen did it as a way to boost first run sales, and I am eagerly awaiting the next installment--due H1 '05--so you could say it worked. Sneaky, capitalistic bast*rd
On Basilisk Station. Baen has also released most of their back catalogue (about 40 books) in various e-formats on one CD--search for Honorverse. It includes the first 9 or 10 Honor Harrington novels.
If you can't find it (or can't be bothered Googling) I can make it available on my site. Oh, it's free and legal. Jim Baen did it as a way to boost first run sales, and I am eagerly awaiting the next installment--due H1 '05--so you could say it worked. Sneaky, capitalistic bast*rd
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I think the Ringo books hit me hardest. I picked up the first book as an "I'll take a chance on this, it's only $6" purchase...
And ended up driving back to the bookstore to pick up the next two volumes the same evening.
And finishing all three - around 1800 pages all told - by 9AM the next morning.
I was a little disappointed by the most recent "Harrington", but very happy with the "Worlds of Honor" stuff that's come out in the meantime.
And yes LiamC, I am a victim of those $25 Baen first run hardcovers as well.
And ended up driving back to the bookstore to pick up the next two volumes the same evening.
And finishing all three - around 1800 pages all told - by 9AM the next morning.
I was a little disappointed by the most recent "Harrington", but very happy with the "Worlds of Honor" stuff that's come out in the meantime.
And yes LiamC, I am a victim of those $25 Baen first run hardcovers as well.
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Thanks Merc! Great work, as usual!
Bartender, bring in the drinks!
So should I just sit back and relax, and refresh a few times before the next episode comes up?
Bartender, bring in the drinks!
So should I just sit back and relax, and refresh a few times before the next episode comes up?
Bartender
Storage is cool
As long as you're sitting and relaxing, have a few more drinks.
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Thanks bartender. Now I might not get up anymore....
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It's sitting on my nightstand but I haven't read it yet. I'm alternating between Stephenson's Quicksilver books (which I'm not enjoying but feel compelled to finish for some reason possibly related to curing my insomnia) and Ian Banks' "Culture" series (which I am enjoying and hence trying to savor).
After that I have "The Great Influenza" on deck and some graphic novels for lighter moments, and then I think I'll be ready for the new Weber (again, trying to save something I know I'll enjoy).
Lunar, may I ask what you don't understand?
After that I have "The Great Influenza" on deck and some graphic novels for lighter moments, and then I think I'll be ready for the new Weber (again, trying to save something I know I'll enjoy).
Lunar, may I ask what you don't understand?
ddrueding
Fixture
Well done again Merc, I'm really enjoying your writing style and choice of content
Computer Generated Baby
Learning Storage Performance
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Can anyone tell from that outburst if Mr. Hendershot is serious or not?
Dïscfärm
Learning Storage Performance
Buck
Storage? I am Storage!
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Must've been a red pill kind of day in Houston.
Dïscfärm
Learning Storage Performance
Groltz
My demeaning user rank is
I hear the phonetic alphabet every day at work.
Gary was spot-on except for his obvious substitution of Mr. Mercutio for Mr. Mike.
Gary was spot-on except for his obvious substitution of Mr. Mercutio for Mr. Mike.