recently

i was told that a lot of the symptoms i had after my feb of 09 concussion (which was wild) are indicative of brain damage. i am losing my ability to touch-type. i'm always off by a row or a column, but it's the same on netbooks, my air, and full size keyboards. i think it's going to get worse. i don't have words for fear like this.

yes, i want it, and i'm broke. be a pal

Ads

Ads, yeah, I know. I'm trying to get GOOG AdWords to just do PSA's. It seems really hard.

A method, but no reason, for killing yourself

If you don't know for damn sure, or you've never put in a ninety-five hour week, this is not for you. This could cause you to have a heart attack or otherwise harm you. For the people employing some method like this, I wanted to share the least-impact combination I have yet to find while still enjoying the benefits of hyperwork.

In the morning, ingest:

• 240mg of Gingold brand Ginkgo extract (that's four pills)
• 200mg of Caffeine in the form of pills like No-Doz (coffee will sour in your stomach)
• Some kind of caffeinated tea. I like Earl Grey and Assam.
• A beverage with a "B-stack." Vitamins B, especially B12, are great for stimulation for force your endocrine system to work with the full-on assault you've just hit it with. Most energy drinks will have it and proudly label it. You may want to take a single No-Doz in addition to a full-size (12-16floz, not the 8oz ones) drink (I really like the Blue agave Full Throttle, but Coca-Cola is aids and I feel guilty giving them money. Glacieau makes "Energy Water," the three of which you should pay attention to are Spark (pink), Energy (yellow; drink cold; actually has caffeine, guarana, and a B-stack, which is sometimes called 'B-100'), and Revive (purple, for tomorrow morning). I sometimes take a separate, individual B-12 pill.
• And lastly, you need some food or you will vomit all this stuff up. I reach for the PowerBar Protein Plus, which advertise 30g of protein and not just 30g, but three different kinds of protein. I tell you, after the first one, I was convinced. They're a good 6-8 hours of calories at the level you'll be operating, and you'll feel full. By the time you're reaching for your second set (below), have another and you'll be good for sixteen hours.

And I mean right when you wake up. When you're taking the pills, heat 500ml (about 2 cups) of water to just under boiling and add it to your tea. Let it steep for the 5-15 minutes it takes you to shower. Wolf down the tea. It will protect your guts. As you leave for the day, or sit down in your home office to work, have the following near you:

• Excedrin. Take up to three pills at a time, but not more than 4-5 hours apart. Caffeine is more effective with Aspirin, and I presume the Ginkgo as well.
• (if you have it) Provigil. Take up to two pills at a time. Caffeine has a 6-8 hour period before "crash" (and that crash is so hard afterwards this second regimen may not work at all). Provigil has an 8-hour crash profile, keep that in mind. It sharpens the mind without harming the body (that we know of).
• (if you have it) a benzodiazepine. NOT halcyon, xanax, or ativan. But with the stimulation you're receiving, your body will want to twitch on you and the typical paranoia, headache, and worry will set in. Take a lot less than your normal dose or you will fall asleep because right now your body wants to sleep. We are still tricking it chemically, remember?
• More Gingko. Instead of the monster doses, take them two at a time every few (3-4) hours, especially if you feel dull. Almost nothing is going to rescue you from being tired, but the above will help with shakes and anxiety that come with the territory of working multiple (even one) eighteen hour day.
• Another power bar.
• I carry the Gatorade G2/Electrolytes tubes (they're like Crystal Light, but come in pen-shaped tubes) with me and as such, I can get Gatorade whenever I like. Gatorade, ironically (because of the salt and sugars–the G2 is better with sugar) leaves you dehydrated. Which is really good for you because you must be taking in at least 500ml (again, two cups or thereabouts). I try to keep a litre going through me an hour.

You'll be urinating a lot, but you will be amazed at what the body and brain will do for you when provoked. I've sustained this sort of pace for eighteen hours, times three days. Afterwards, I slept for about twelve hours. Like a baby. I woke up refreshed, happy, and was positively itching to rewrite a fractal arrays perl module into vectors. Insane, right? My wife was very understanding, and I love her for that. She saw what I was accomplishing. And, really, I got a hell of a lot accomplished.

For my previous recipe, I treated the nights instead of the day. To quote,

• 5 oz captain morgan's private stock
• 4 oz bacardi 151
• 4 oz myers legend (or myers dark) rum

 You'll have to read the rest there, but it's a doozie, and I think I am too old to drink it anymore.

Why? That's Aristotle stuff.

At one point in college, everyone is asked to write a sieve of Eratosthenes, or at the very least, a prime number generator of their own design. The sieve is not the fastest way to do it, and yet everyone from the python people to the C and CXX people think it's sufficient.

I want a parallellized, C-based prime finder and all I'm finding is sieves.

The wacky world of NETWAR, TDMA, China, and AFIT/AFRL

So it turns out that way back in 2004 (2003, really, is when Captain–now Major, I believe–Stinson started talking about running IP over Link16 [I have an offline copy of this if it disappears] (which you and I may call JTIDS or TDMA or "a wire protocol" interchangeably). Back then it was just a thesis, and Link16 was even fuzzier than it is today (there are a lot of unanswered questions about how exactly it's supposed to do what it does, and my TDMA module explains some of those questions; I'll follow this up with a post addressing that), so he was working with what was then the state of the art, but it was a moving target and I think things have kind of moved off center for him. He was at Wright-Patt of course (uh, AFIT...) but interestingly and appropriately worked with AFRL, who are a great group of people.

While I wouldn't say he complained as such, he did discuss rather miserable bitrates for vehicles that are fighting. I want more than 238kbyte/s of information coming to me if people are shooting at me, that's for sure. He talks about the different advantages and disadvantages, and it looks like some people followed his work and were talking about things like sensor fusion (when are they not talking about sensor fusion, right?) and net-centricity, but then they never stop talking about that, either. Then JSTARS came along and I stopped paying too much attention (really, they're not paying me enough to figure their problems out, right?)

So from Wright-Patt it looks like he made is way to ... Wright-Patt, where he now seems to be working with the Air Force Materiel Command. Right now, he seems to be following his passion (and frankly, I love these birds, so I can see how he might want to follow them, but his passion is not the birds, but the data link of course. A geek at heart, and I think he'd be flattered by that). So here's what he's looking for:

In accordance with FAR 5.201, this announcement serves the purpose of a notice of contract action and is not intended for RFP issuance. The A-10 Systems Squadron anticipates a sole source acquisition for total integration of the SADL/Enhanced Position Location Reporting System (EPRLS) radio with Improved Data Modem (IDM) to provide EPLRS waveform and Variable Message Format (VMF) capability respectively into the A/OA-10C Aircraft. This effort will include a basic contract to include integration of SADL radios and IDM onto 110 A/OA-10C aircraft with an option of approximately 246 additional A/OA-10C aircraft.

Seriously, did they call radios "Saddle Radios"? That's kind of funny. At any rate, he wants modems that speak link16 so he can get bits to his birds!!! And he's willing to give you forty million dollars [yep, got a copy of that, too, and that one will go away] if you can do it. Unfortunately it looks like the assbirds at LockMart have got their filthy hands on the thing and what Stinson is going to get will underperform, overrun his budget, most certainly be ugly, and no support whatever because as soon as that shit is made, Lockheed lays their developers off. Forty mil? Check. Overhead? Eh, fire some developers. Roger, Check. (You would not believe how many people will tell you this story from their own experience or trying to get a developer on the phone at Lockheed when combat is fucking happening with their product, and it's DOING IT WRONG!)

Anyways, it's cool. He's kind of got the wrong idea, but I appreciate what he's doing. While trying to find his email address, however, I came across this, and really, I have to chuckle. A periodical in Chinese [yes, I have an archival copy.] (I don't read Chinese well except for a few gwailo characters I have to know) has cited Stinson's article, among others. A few things, ah, stick out. Of course the first thing is the title of the article, Communication Delay of Tactical Datalink Effects o Air Combat and Its Compensation (note that the Chinese are better at the use of the word "its" than nine tenths of Americans; not so sure about the caps, though...).

The next is that this article is published in The Journal of Projectiles, Rockets, Missiles, and Guidance. I shit you not (I do not, however, have any hard copies of this journal, no soft copies, no articles from within; just abstracts in simplified Chinese).

So Stinson's, you know, doing his job (and missing the point, and I really really hope he emails me, because I can't find his address, just his phone number and he's probably not going to want a call from me at AFMC. But the Chinese, see, they're reading these same journals. As it turns out, if you read the abstract (I couldn't get any closer than a simplified Chinese abstract of what the article is actually about, let alone a full copy in English), the author isn't trying to interfere with Link16 or anything.

It turns out that 毛丽艳, 姜长生, 吴庆宪, MAO Li-yan, JIANG Chang-sheng, and WU Qing-xian were trying to figure out the best way to keep talking with an aircraft (or missile, but let's not quibble) when it is by definition in motion. They have some pretty good ideas, and I'd love to read their paper.

My original concern was, however, that Stinson was doing his best to write about for his thesis how we can push IP over "software radio," and our buddies above were doing their best to figure out ways to defeat it. So indeed the world is not so ironic after all, and maybe the Chinese don't want to shoot down these amazing (chuckle) F-35's after all.

I really love this gun

Anyone wanting to make my day is welcome to pick me up a Benelli R1 in 300 win (I wonder if they'd do 300 wby just for me). That is a niiiiice rifle, and when I contacted Nightforce, they said their scopes would not be harmed by the fierce recoil of the 300 mags. Maybe even the 30-378 wby. But my guess is they won't chamber that gun in the monster wby because it's a danger. Besides, you probably want one of those $10,000 side-by-side break breach rifles with those cartridges because they're for hunting thick skinned dangerous game. Hardball as opposed to XTP so that you can shatter a shoulder bone and hit heart or lungs (or brain; I once saw video of a .577 Tyr drop a charging bull elephant in its tracks from a shot between his eyes. That is impressive.)

Or maybe Benelli will send me one to review. I am approaching a thousand posts here, going back almost ten years, and I know my guns. Maybe I'll blogroll them and they'll get the point, or maybe they have a media relations person I can ask super politely.

Damn I need an FFL.