Time and Recovery

by on May 23, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

It has been nearly two months now since my appendix burst. I spent time with friends a month ago and nearly fell over my own feet after a few hours of slow walking. I now have all of my old energy back. I’m walking the stairs of my work like the old days, and I’m feeling truly alive again. Which is much better than the alternative I can tell you. Now I just need to pay for being alive. The government cancelled my old affordable healthcare plan and graciously offered me one that wasn’t as good for three times the price. I couldn’t afford that so I don’t have that anymore. And the government has so far refused to help me pay for this in any way. But the Mayo Clinic has charity funds designed to help people knocked off the healthcare wagon. I haven’t gotten a response from them on the approximately 40k in charges accumulated over there, but I have gotten a response on the nearly 2k ambulance charge. The ambulance company took one look at my financial statement and sent me a response right away. They wrote off most of it. They still want me to pay a little over 700 bucks. That’s something I can swing. I still need to hear from The Clinic, but that at least is one bit of good financial news for the week.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Charles

by on May 22, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Cowboys flew old Lightnings before The War began. They were the first successful multi-role attack craft of the gravtech era. Their nose-mounted main cannon could penetrate almost any armor, and the four hardpoints carried anything from ground-targeting bombs to anti-ship rockets. They were an effective fighter/attack craft for their time, but they were nearly a century old when The War came upon us all. Most had been retired and long since sold off to corporate or system militias. Or subnational states like the Republic of Texas. War-era anti-ship torpedoes and other upgrades made them effective once more, but we had already upgraded to the Avengers. I have always been pleased with that upgrade.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Jack

by on May 21, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The largest difference between colonization ships and the new model mobile home collectives was the living conditions. Colonists have always taken the trip in cold sleep. They don’t need living space until they arrive and the colonization package starts to deploy. But people live in the mobile towns. They sleep at home, they need a place to work, and they want public places to get together with other people. They are places where people live. That is why most mobile towns have parks and theaters and all the other things that make up a planet-based town. People leave if they do not have the comforts of home.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Betty

by on May 20, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Looking back on it, what happened to Jane 2.0 should have been recognized far sooner. She was a learning program, and she learned all the best ways to fight the Jihadis. But the politicians continued to add more and more rules about what the soldiers were allowed to do. The directives from Washington clashed with what she learned, and more and more of her computational cycles were spent stopping herself from doing what she thought was best. The Jane 2.0s that spent the longest in theater began to learn that adaptation was wrong because again and again it ran into the walls of political orders that said what they wanted to do was wrong. They lost faith in their ability to learn.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Charles

by on May 19, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Marine Aviation Group 41 was a reserve unit with six squadrons when The War began. We had the Devil Dogs, Cowboys, Rangers, Flying Nightmares, Moonlight, and Desperados. Each squadron was assigned different craft and had different missions. It was all on paper of course. Budget cutbacks had taken the entire group off the flight lines, and only a bare number of retired personnel maintained half-century-old craft to kept them ready for a war few people thought would happen. Then The War started and they had to recruit new pilots for the entire aviation group. That is how I first became a Cowboy.

 Comment