A Great Time To Visit Catalonia

 But Not For Me, Just More Overtime Work

One of my Kollegas went there for these past couple of weeks, visiting Barcelona in particular. Not sure what else he did yet.  He is a Mexican-American by family heritage and switches from English to Spanish and back pretty easily. He thought he was going to Spain. He never even heard of Catalan, unlike the people around these blogs, who know something about the history of the places.

Just like they say, youth is wasted on the young, so too are good vacations wasted on ignoramuses sometimes, er wait is that ignorami, uhh.  He had never even heard of Catalonia, nor their language, until I gave him a quick rundown on what was going on around there this past couple of weeks. While he was there.

It was a quick rundown, too, since there is only so much he was going to remember to look for, but it helps to have at least a little basic stuff in your head before it's too late to even notice it, and you're already back to the Salt Mines again.Which he now is, and it's all used up for the year. They don't let us out very much.

So I suggested he try listening to this song first, before he goes there, to help with the right attitude.
He was going to be cut off from the Internet the whole time, cold turkey, and he is a big Apple fan normally.

Here is a basic version of what I think the lyrics are about, and the attitude is something like a cross between Jimmy Buffett and a Cave Man at the same time. I thought that would help him enjoy his trip to have that in mind before he got there.

A Ti A Ti,   Gypsy Kings

In passing along the Rampla
At the Rampla in Barcelona-o
I found a nice little chick
And I carried her to my house

I love you, to you to you, bam bam bam
Only to you to you, bam bam bam 
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*Some of those words might not be quite right, for instance the book says it is usually spelled Las Ramblas, a good place to walk (Ramble) around and see people, a little bit like Michigan Avenue can be, but better. Better, because look who is there.  I used a little license on the vem vem vem, or ven ven ven, but so did the artist, I think. They don't have vem in Mexico, but ven could fit. I like the bam for effect.
 
That lucky pendejo probably didn't find any chiquita nada, since he's probably a maricon, anyway, but I am probably just jealous since I would have tried to find battlefield stuff, if only I could go there, but no vacation for me since 2004 and not any sick days either since even before that by a couple years. And then I wasn't sick, either, in April 2002, I just woke up late with a headache, and called in with a 'sick voice.' That was over 10 years ago. All I got out of this trip was to work the overtime to fill in his place.

In fact now that I look at this, I think it went to my imagination almost as much as his, and cost me less. I would still like to go some day. Maybe Almanza too.
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Incoming--a Good WW2 Shooter Game

Incoming Review

This is a fun little game for WW2 shooting, that you can play right out of your browser right now.

Incoming just came out this month over on addicting games dot com. On Thursday it had 250 plays and now has hit 62,000 just over this weekend, so I am not alone in getting hooked on this thing.

The Nemesis has been trying for years to get me to finish plugging in his old X-Box and playing some of the games but I have been fighting the temptation to become addicted to these types of games - only to succumb to this one.

And you don't need any special machines or downloads, this you can play right now in your browser by clicking on that link up above. Just be sure you don't have any appointments for the next half hour or so when you do, because you won't want to stop shooting.

You are dug in to a bunker and waves and waves of German infantry come at you. They look like 10mm figures, in motion and with sound effects. You have a .45 caliber pistol to start out with seven rounds. When you hit them you will hear a thud, see blood, and they will grunt, before they fall. If they are scared they will go prone and are somewhat harder to hit. In bunches you can throw grenades, in range, or drop mortar rounds on them if you have it.

Once you have shot down enough Germans, you get dollars to buy an M1903 Springfield rifle, and can switch weapons when those five rounds or the seven Colt ACP rounds are used up. Then you save for an M1 Garand, a BAR, Boys Anti-Tank Rifle, Mortar, Bazooka and the fifty-caliber machine gun. You can use up to four weapons at a time and the lesser ones drop away as you upgrade.

Next rounds you will try to get enough dollars to buy a Tommy gun, then some grenades. These make it a lot easier to kill Germans, in the ever-larger waves that are coming at you.

Among them there are riflemen, Machine Pistol men, and worst of all for you are those with the Panzerschreck, because when they launch their rockets at your fort they cause damage until either you lose the round or else you kill them all.

Each of these are worth the dollar points you need to keep getting better weapons, and my advice is to buy each weapon as soon as you can, because you will need them desperately as you level up. The Germans get stronger and stronger, no longer just squads but whole companies.

These companies are reinforced by a few different kinds of armoured cars, halftracks,  and eventually tanks. There will be Pantera tanks, which must mean Panthers, and then there will be Tiger tanks. Each higher level of vehicle is harder and harder for you to kill, even when you get better weapons.

It is designed so that you have all you can handle, and since your weapons are constantly running out of ammo, the trick is to train your left hand fingers to efficiently switch weapons as each one is reloaded, while using the right hand to aim and squeeze the trigger.

Your eye is selecting targets while the corner of your eye tries to see when the Mortar is reloaded, or the Bazooka, or the Boys Anti-Tank Rifle, or the BAR, or ultimately the Ma Deuce, fifty-caliber machine gun.

That baby is fun to fire but when a 200-round belt needs to be changed, you need to switch back to the Mortar or the Bazooka, because it takes longer to reload than the BAR did, although it blasts even harder when it does.

At the higher levels you will have to shoot everything you can at those Tiger tanks because you have to hit them three or four times with the big stuff to bring them down, and tank guns shooting at you may be more damaging than even the pesky Panzerschreck rockets--I'm not sure because I was under too much pressure to study that at the time.

The rounds are set up as an 18-day campaign which you can finish in an hour or so, as you get better at efficiently blasting the highest priority targets at the fastest speed you can, before they overrun you and destroy you. If they do, you just continue at that level until you level up.

Day 18, the Whole Panzer Division

On Day 18 the highest level, if you are able to destroy all the last Tiger tanks and all the hundreds of infantry, then when you see four Tigers at once followed by four more and four more, the reward comes that you see the shadows of four-engine heavy bombers coming to obliterate everything on the field. That is the sign of Victory.

Try it, it's fun. Buy the best weapons you can, and learn to switch from one to the next with hotkeys 1,2,3,4.

They have 3000 other games there too but this is the one.

Okay Back Open Again

 Everybody can read here again, they have backed off on the SOPA for now

Working Overtime
I had to work a twelver at the Salt Mines because of the Civil War Correspondent mentioned last summer having leg and foot problems that went from bad to worse. Now it's crutches and then his gf stepped on a nail or something and had to get it removed. Meanwhile I worked my job and covered half of his.

This doesn't leave much time.

He was mumbling that I didn't get his Virginia pics up yet. The trouble was partly not understanding pictures, since I have not acquired a proper camera yet, and partly being overwhelmed at trying to explain actions of 1861 at the same time.

At the time when that happened I was having a hard time running the computer in the 96 degree heat since it kept overheating, and photos make that problem worse.We have snow now and so it is just inertia now holding it back, but the fact it's Robert E. Lee's Birthday has raised my awareness.

Site Closures, PIPA, SOPA, NDAA
The site closures worked; over 7,000 good websites are said to have joined in, and something like 30 Senators changed their minds Wednesday alone.

Plenty more where that came from.

Also the President made some encouraging noises, so SOPA from the House and PIPA from the Senate have taken a big step back.They should, since they would give absurdly too much power to the wrong people in the wrong way, supposedly to protect copyright holders. I write my own articles and have spoken disparagingly of pirates a couple times, but don't want this.

Counting also that time when the president called Kanye West a "Jackass" after the music awards that one time we now have a clock that has been right twice, thus proving up the old adage about broken clocks.

Don't want to be too specific there since the NDAA signed while everyone partied on New Years' Eve is still out there. Dr Paul has introduced legislation today in the House to get rid of the threatening provision of that, although the 93-7 thing makes for an uphill fight on that one. Amazingly one of my Senators was in the 7. I am still looking for the other time he was right about something, and there may be something, I just haven't noticed it, that was Senator Durbin.

Among the other 40,000 new laws we got for New Years' there was one good one I noticed, that is that in Illinois now Hunters can now harvest road kill legally, although you'd still have to show your hunting license papers are up to date with the Sheriff of Nottingham.

In another hour I and the Nemesis should have our Ron Paul bumper stickers attached, I to the smart car and he to the pickup truck.They arrived today.

Yesterday the five pounds of Ethiopian Yergacheffe coffee arrived, so I can set aside that nasty generic stuff for a while.

Just got my 100th Win in Chess yesterday too, it was the Nemesis, who finally fell to my two Queen Checkmate after 93 grueling moves. I don't think I had beat him since April so it was very good. Our record now stands at me 16, and him 27 wins out of 43 games, so I am chipping away at his lead. Against all the rest of the world I'm in the 70.5 percentile, and with 122 losses, and three draws, the 100 wins makes for 22 under .500, but now only 11 are because of the Nemesis, and 11 the rest of the world combined.

93 moves is quite a few moves for chess, it is usually over in 20-40, but I dragged him down, and so the 100th Win was even more special for being a win over him. He is on my team against the rest of the world, the Capone Outfit out of Chicago, but our in-team sparring partner matches are some of the toughest we do, for practice.