Paolo Emilio! Italian Destroyer

After forever it seems, I have gotten my FIRST research ship, the Paolo Emilio!

It is an interesting ship, most players I know feel I was crazy to go for this ship because it is supposedly boxed into a specific role by World Of Warships.  But I read an in-depth review of it written by Little White Mouse and she noted that it has some surprising features.  I also did some research from other players (players who were also wrapped up in naval history) and learned that the Paolo was originally designed (or at least considered to be more like) a light cruiser, larger than a typical destroyer.

Well, my favorite ships to play are light cruisers in game.  They have next to no armor so you really need to "dance around" and hide when you can, and then appear and fire off as many rounds at a target as you can.  Another nice feature of light cruisers are torpedoes; most have them.

So it occurred to me that, hey, if I treat this over-sized destroyer as a light cruiser, and play to protect myself from being hit but hit as often as I can I should be good, right?

I learn to play ships in co-op mode (which means people vs bots) so the score is not necessarily very indicative of how a random match (player vs player) or a clan battle would go, but even so in my second battle with this ship I was the top scorer in the match and here are the results:

I am not displeased with that.  In co-op mode it is every man for him/herself.  People play co-op to earn easy points, to earn badges, to "practice" a new ship, etc.  I have no idea if I can have success in a random match, will have to try that, but I am encouraged to find that with my gun range, and reload speed build, I can play this destroyer like a "light cruiser" and survive.

Linux Mint

 So I've documented bits and pieces of my linux journey over time.  I started using linux in the early 2000's but I still consider myself a n00b and a very casual user.

That being said, I kept running into various issues with MX, Pop, and a couple other distros... I ended up switching to something more simple, Mint.

To be fair, it does NOT solve all the issues, but it does simplify how much I can muck with my system and break it.  :D

But I really like the simplicity of Cinnamon, yet it also has the ability to extend it, and the dark theme is gorgeous.  It is also easy to get Steam up and running and even add proton-GE as well as wine and lutris for gaming.  I also (because I am a dolt and cannot leave well enough alone) found it easy to install and use xanmod kernels.  AS LONG AS YOU ARE NOT USING ZFS as your root file system.  That hoses it up something fierce.

Anyway that's it.  My puppy is growing like a weed.  She's a little beast.

World of Warships... continued

 Just a general update.  

I managed to save up enough coal to get the Forrest Sherman, I've reached tier X in multiple lines, etc.

Next I plan on trying CVs and Subs.

In the meantime, maybe I imagine things but... I love my Italian ships.  I've heard people badmouth the Roma but oh MAN I love that ship.  It is quick, nimble and if you maneuver close enough and manage a broadside?  BOOM that AP hits HARD.  I've one-shot'd cruisers, DDs, even multi-citadel'd BBs with it.  Sweet.  I also started playing destroyer lines and have picked up to Tier VIII in Italian line and am having fun with that as well.

MEANWHILE.

I have a puppy.  I got her at 8 weeks but she is 14 weeks now, a standard Schnauzer.  She is crazy, stubborn, mouthy but... she is sweet and fun.  She drives me nuts at times, but once she gets past her puppy months she will be my best buddy.

And that is it!  Cheers!

Gods and Aliens

As humans we are both intelligent and ridiculously stupid.

We have a good side, as we (in my belief) are reflections (albeit super imperfect) of the creator of the universe.

But... we are also corrupted and everything that is reflection of the nature of God we have taken and corrupted and reshaped into our own... well... whatever you would call it.

So I have been watching this series on ancient astronauts and it kind of cracks me up because there are also religious explanations for the same stuff.  Of course I see the irony here, scientifically minded/naturalist minded people will see both the religious and speculative people's views in the same light:  garbage.

Even so, one of the things that people overlook in the Bible is the topic of heavenly beings.  I am not just talking about Angels.  Angels are heavenly beings who play a specific role.  There are many other created beings in Heaven other than "angels".  God is the creator of them all.

It is clearly noted in the Bible that these beings have been interacting with man for eons, and are even equated to the "gods" of the ancient civilizations (prince[s] of Babylon for example).  Part of the reason the angels were "spanked" by the way.  It is pretty clear that God was offering a line of redemption to rebellious heavenly beings by "managing" human civilizations but... they obviously became the objects of worship instead of guiding lights.  And of course that wouldn't fly.  But that is something you can research for yourselves.  God Himself reserved the right to manage the "Israelite" people.  Hence stems the entire latter parts of the Bible (outside of Genesis and Exodus).  But I am rambling.

The particular episode I was watching was in regards to the predecessors to the Inca, and I absolutely love the various bits thrown in about "a great flood" and relationships to the ancient Sumerians, etc.  I mean, you KNOW Abram (later Abraham) hailed from Babylon and the Sumerian peoples, yes?

Aww.  I will stop now, I am rambling a bit.

It's just that man would rather accept aliens from another world in the same universe over a God who CREATED the universe, and other realms and beings.  A God who pursued humanity to the point where he became a human... and not an original human, but a corrupted version of humanity, in order to sacrifice His life to pay for the corruption we helped spread.  By the way, the serpent in the Garden of Eden?  Why did Adam and Eve just talk to some crazy serpent there?  Because they were familiar with it.  It wasn't NEW to them.  Many heavenly beings have different forms, or can take different forms.  The Serpent?  The Serpent was "common" to their experience...  But that is another story .

Why the Linux community is a pain and why Linux just can't succeed as an everyday desktop.

Please, before I begin, I LOVE Linux operating systems.  I've even petitioned our laptop team where I work to research Linux laptops, since our application servers also run Linux.  So please don't think I am anti-Linux.  I am not.  I have Pop OS running on this PC, dual booting with Windows (for gaming).

But here is the problem with open source projects, especially of the "flavor of linux" kind:  people.

Simply put people are people and since these are open source projects and little anarchist societies that pull together with a starting goal, very very soon, one year, two years, five years, some major conflict hits and the distro goes *poof*.

Yeah yeah, "well then SPIN YOUR OWN".  No.  I seriously have a full time job++, I have a family and other responsibilities and I just don't have the extra time to spend on building out my own gentoo or slackware or some other build... and I want support.  I want the apps to be updated, the OS to continue to grow and improve... and again, no time.

As an example, two very good distros recently went AWOL:  elementaryOS and SolusOS.  Both were excellent distros.  Both had interesting and "different" features from the mainstream.  But in both distros PEOPLE got in the way, resentment and anger built up and soon the lead developers abandoned the projects (more or less).

I will stick to my Windows PC for gaming and my Mac Studio for other stuff.

The hypocrisy of this is I am now following SerpentOS closely...

One can only hold out hope.

Check this place out, please. Lots of super short videos on many bible themes.

The Bible Project 

Knowing God and Humanity

So I have said before that I am Christian.  Many Christians, including myself, often find it difficult to convey what we understand about ourselves and God, the relationship that is there, who and what we are to God and one another.

We do have a mission and one part of it consists of sharing what we know with people who don't know, or who think they know but don't really because they've never looked at it in depth, they've just heard about it.

So our mission stems from God's two great commandments (yeah I am sure you have heard of the 10 commandments, but the 10 commandments actually depend on these, and in fact the first of the 10 commandments ties into the 2).

1) Love god with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

2) Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

The 10 commandments sort of expand on these.  And then the old testament contains many more laws that also tied onto the 10 commandments.

So back to our mission...  we need to know who God is and to do what he wants of us, to be what he wants us to be, we need to first love Him.  If you love him, everything else follows.  The second great commandment is what we do when we love Him...  we love other humans.  What does this love look like?

Well, Jesus himself is a good role model.  He did amazing things that you can read about.  And I am not saying we need to do miracles, but what did Jesus do?  He fed the hungry, he touched lepers and comforted outcasts, he forgave people... etc.  He was kind and had compassion for people who needed kindness and compassion.

You've heard of that "golden rule", do unto others as you would have them do unto you?  It is sort of the turned around version of love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Well, I am rambling.

THAT is our basic mission.  But now the reason WHY we do that.  WHAT we know about God.

This can get very very complicated if you delve deeply, but the short and skinny of it is this:

1. We are all sinners.

But what does that MEAN?

Well it has different meanings but, sin is behaving contrary to the will of God (who is perfect).

Unfortunately there isn't anything we can DO about this, because since the beginning of humanity we have been doing this.

2. The price of sin is death.

We die.  Right?  The original plan did not include us dying.  The new plan is the same way.  But while we are here in our lives on Earth and while we are still in our current physical state, we will die.

3. Jesus paid that price.

The REAL purpose of Jesus coming to us (God born as a man, in our current physical form) was to DIE for us as the ULTIMATE sacrifice for all man.  Remember?  Sin is death.  We die because of  sin.  Well, Jesus is God, eternal.  He offered up his eternal life to pay the price of all our sins for all time by accepting the punishment, death.

4. He rose and took his place in heaven and he is our advocate in heaven.

This part might be weird but Jesus died and God resurrected, and there are things Jesus did while he was dead that are referred to in other books but the gist of it is, he gave the rebellious heavenly beings who started off this whole mess in the first place, a good talking to.  Now, his ascension to heaven... Jesus returned in a new physical form.  This form is what we will all receive at "the end times".  AND we will hang out with Jesus in heaven as God's adopted children.  If we accept this gift of Jesus sacrifice, he will stand before God for us and advocate for our place in heaven.

There is a LOT of stuff in #4 that requires more of a deep dive, but when Christians share the Gospel (the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus) we often stop there and people do not have a clear understanding of the WHOLE story from the beginning.  That's what the Bible is for, after all.  But that is not exactly what we are supposed to be doing.

Really our mission comes down to this:

1) Act like God's priests on Earth (feed and cloth people, help people in need, etc)

2) Share the story of God and man

3) Continue to represent God on earth in how we live and act.

^^^^^^^^^ That's it in a nutshell!  ^^^^^^^^^^

There is a lot more to this of course.  The Bible is an AMAZING book that tells it "like it is" (remember "keeping it real"?).  Some parts of it can be difficult to read, sometimes you might need to ask questions about something that might not make sense to you, but it is a good read.  There are sections where you will probably struggle not because it is difficult to understand, but because it seems so repetitive.  And in many ways it is repetitive but there are subtle differences.  ANYWAY!

Check out this web site, it is WAY better at talking about this than I can ever be:

https://bibleproject.com/explore/themes/