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Grippe

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Posts posted by Grippe

  1. WoT is a rite of passage for many fantasy readers.  It is long, and incredibly well written - with one caveat: RJ self-admittedly became too-detail oriented around book 8 and it slogs on for about 4 books (into book 12).  But you'll have to forgive him, it was during this period when the disease that eventually forced him to stop writing and ask Brandon Sanderson to finish the last books began taking over every facet of his life.

    Would definitely recommend.  Even more strongly - start reading this thread at page one, there are a metric shit-tonne amounts of recommendations and comments on this series and others that will get you up to speed.  And saying TL;DR is a no-go in this forum, it's about reading!

  2. Bumping this thread - wife and I visiting my dad (who's going to outlive Willie and Keith Richards, but definitely not AB) the second week of September.  We defintely plan on Wrights BBQ (drive thru) and Whitaker Point, just wondering if there's anything more to do up there for 2.5 days?

  3. Following up more on Rob J. Hayes - 100% endorse everyone here giving his works a read.

    Finishing up City of Thorns and all I can say is wow, what a delight.  Especially having read all his books in a row, to be able to experience his technical and artistic writing evolution.

  4. 8 hours ago, Viper said:

    Try some John scalzi. 

    Solid rec, will piggy back and say to start with Old Man's War (although it is a series the first book is great as a stand-alone).

    Or try The Forever War by Haldeman (he added 2 more books a few decades later to make it a series, but it's fine if you just read the first).

    • Like 1
  5. Been stabbed (accidentally), shot (shotgun accident, was only a little bit of shot), have had roken ribs (the sneezing pain ain't no joke), broken bones in all my limbs (including compound fracture in my leg on a skiing accident), cracked skull as an infant, etc., but my top 3 painful are:

    3.  Herniated disc (5 surgeries): As others on here can attest, it awful in a burning knife cutting it's way down the back of your leg kind of way

    2.  Acute diverticulitis (the killing kind): Feels like someone has stabbed you multiple times in your lower gut and there's no remedy other than waiting for the antibiotics to work (finally had my intestines re-sectioned)

    1.  Testicular Torsion: When your nut spins inside the sac and cuts off the blood flow to the testi - fast ramp pain (less than 5 minutes) that left me curled up on the floor unable to unlock from a fetal position while throwing up, shitting and pissing myself all while my young kids (2 and 3) were sitting there screaming and crying because they didn't know what was happening to daddy

  6. 9 hours ago, mulletpelini said:

    I see it but I'm guessing its more

    ford-gt40-mk1-2-749.jpg

    I really don't think there is a more iconic race car than this - the livery and prominence are familiar and beloved worldwide.

    • Like 2
  7. Not going to address the issue of Brad.

    I'm fairly drunk again tonight, playing P99 and simply wanted to say - this is still the best MMO ever created.  It's ugly, clunky and hard - and dammit if despite all of the gaffe's it still isn't as close to perfection as anything offered.

  8. 42 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    What of my statements do you disagree with regarding AWS's positioning for gov contracts?

    Or are you just attacking me for simply stating who this whole shitstorm involves, and acknowledging that there just *might* be a political reason for the decisions going the way they did?

    Because you didn't disagree with anything I actually said, you just claim to be working on this 10 billion dollar contract, so therefore I'm wrong about everything?

    kk, extending an olive branch here and providing a deeper description - please skip over the gov't purchasing if you're already aware of it.

    Huge oversimplification: Any purchasing for the DoD isn't performed by the uniform service end-user.  The purchasing is done through an OSD PEO - civilian agents who control the funds, and who are audited by the GAO (see below).

    In the last few years, in an effort to better understand (and compete for) DoD contracts, several large companies have shifted their "understand the customer" focus to include how PEO's  make their decisions - even going so far as to host senior PEO officers under government-to-corporate Fellowship programs for 1-year.  Microsoft had done a phenomenal job of learning PEO business and establishing relationships in those offices - and they aren't the only one to do so.

    The central point of my original post - Amazon, who led the industry in so many ways, has not kept up with other companies (such as Microsoft) in trying to fully understand the PEO's.

    Additional point - PEO selections such as this are 'typically' audited by the GAO, which reports it's findings directly to Congress.  I've worked with many of the PEO executives who are part of the Fellowship where I am fortunate enough to be employed, they are VERY conscientious about being as apolitical as possible and simply make the best decision they can for the end users and the taxpayers.

    • Like 1
  9. 22 hours ago, Captainant said:

    ...you do realize that AWS has billions of dollars in existing gov contracts, and even has an entire completely airgapped and extremely tightly governed cloud environment just for government workloads? Including their own backbone network that was built and is ran exclusively by and for AWS for govcloud use that meets all the regulatory requirements you mentioned?

    I don't mean to tell you you're wrong that "AWS doesn't know how to talk government contracts"... But you're out of your element, Donnie

    Ha, you so funny - if only I wasn't working on the contracting solution for this exact same program for an IT corporation headquartered in Round Rock.

    Suck it Marie, you're clearly talking out of your ass because you cannot help yourself from going full CR.  Next time you want to internet pontificate you might want to consider that some of the posters here have considerable experience with the subject matter they're discussing (obviously not Hugo but he's our retard and we love him for all his faults).

    SMMFH at the hubris...

  10. There's more to this:  Gov't acquisition through contracting has changed dramatically in the last few years where "Lowest cost, commercially available" isn't as straight forward as it used to be.

    10 years ago, hell even 5 in some cases (GSA, ITES, etc.), the old rule of the cost-of-commodity (hardware/software) was still the primary consideration for awarding contracts - these days with the complexity of solutions (which have to be NIST 800-171 compliant (now including CMMC!!)) the PEO for the Gov't agency must look at the total solution - hardware, software, deployment, education, configuration, support, CUI Security, redeployment/recycling, etc. etc..

    The real story isn't politics (/no cr, gasp!), it's that M$ is better at understanding PEO evaluations during contract awards than Amazon.  I find it hilarious that Bezos is crying 'unfair' and launching legal action, when for years he was the pontiff of beating the other guy by a better business model, and fighting so many lawsuits himself.

    • Like 4
    • Fuck You 1
  11. 18 hours ago, Grippe said:

    Absolutely not a lulz, but one of the channels I watch, SV Seeker, had an explosion that hurt the owner.  It was caught indirectly by a guy visiting and helping out:

     

    Fucking sonofabitch - it was a hoax to emphasize safety.  Rassa Frassa....

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