Wait, you're still here?

So I bet you didn't think I'd post here again, but you were wrong. Take that, nonbeliever.

Yep, Lisa guilted me into keeping this going, so let's just pretend I purposefully took a month off to get back into the swing of school. All part of the plan.

Honestly, there have been several post-worthy events in the last month, but now that I'm actually doing things, I have less time to write about doing things. Quite the Catch-22, I know. So what have I been up to?
--------------------------
Classes, for one. Statistical Mechanics isn't hard, but only because I took it before and know what to pay attention to this time. Honestly, half of physics is knowing when to tune out during lectures. The best plan is to wake up 5 minutes before the end of class and write down whatever equation the teacher spent the last hour deriving. Trust me, I'm not in danger of failing out at all.

Phys 407 (aka Electricity & Magnetism, aka Bend Over This Is Gonna Hurt) looks like the main obstacle between me and graduating early. It's not particularly work-intensive or poorly-taught, it's just plain hard. Too much 'just take the divergence of the curl of the spherical surface integral', mainly. This is the only class I really need to get my act together for.

Modern Lab (Phys 431L) is a pretty typical lab - loads of work, but conceptually simple. Interestingly, the higher up the lab is, the less they seem to expect for the lab report. The only difficult part of Modern Lab is that he doesn't tell us how to do the lab, so we have to look it up ourselves (on Wikipedia, if you're me).

What else? Deductive Reasoning is easy so far. What they don't tell you is, it's just truth tables. Those might actually be the most useful thing I learned in 9th grade (thank you, Ms. Piper). The hardest thing about this class is attending it - the teacher essentially does problems out of the book the whole time, and if I skip I can enjoy an uninterrupted afternoon of whatever.

And then there's Gym. It's easy, despite making me feel like I'm going to vomit sometimes (guess I'm more out of shape than I thought...) . Probably better I exercise now, though - I've heard Police Academy isn't especially hard, but it's a lot less pleasant if you're dying during workouts. And gym might be the one class they care if you failed in college.
----------------

Also, I've done plenty of not-class. Four things occupying my time these days:

1) Shooting - I ran into my favorite gun-nut cousin (or technically, first-cousin once removed) at my grandparent's 50th Wedding Anniversary. (Sidenote: Marriage. I'm pretty much in favor of it. It's idealistic, but not cripplingly so. Thoughts?) Anyway, he lives not-so-far-away, so we've arranged to go shooting together a couple weekends a month. Last time, I shot his Yugo SKS (Russia service rifle, post-WWII, pre-AK-47) and his PTR-91 (which is essentially an H&K G3 clone, which was essentially a rather-more-German FN FAL).

Both were nice rifles- the PTR had more kick than I like, but was nicely accurate. The SKS was fun and manageable to shoot, but was inherently less accurate - probably only good out to 100 yards, or a little more with practice. It is, however, about 1/10th the cost of the PTR, putting it within my hypothetical price range.

With any luck, I'll be going to the range again Saturday after next, and I'll get to try out his Saiga AK-conversion and Mosin Nagant M44 (another cheap Russian rifle I'm considering). More to follow.

2) Silent Hunter 3 - My friends always joke about how the amount I enjoy a game is directly proportional to how boring that game is. I don't deny it; after all, I play Defcon in real time, think non-combat flight sims are fun, and wasted endless hours Urban Dead (despite that game limiting you to about a half hour of actual gameplay per day). So they got me to try a game that's supposed to be even more boring: a submarine simulator.

Needless to say, it's awesome. Silent Hunter 3 (there's a good crack floating around the internet) puts you in a German U-Boat during WWII, on a mission to sink Allied shipping and cut off Britain from the rest of the world. So yeah, you're the bad guy, and you lose in the end.

It's extremely fun, though. Career Mode is really what makes the game. You begin as an untried U-Boat captain in charge of a dinky Type II sub in 1939, but after a few patrols, you can use the Renown you've gained to convince the higher-ups you deserve better equipment and crew. You're awarded medals for your victories, and your crew levels up over time with you. The goal: survive until the end of the war in 1945 (a feat few German submariners managed), or at least take as much Allied tonnage as you can down with you.

The great thing is that instead of having scripted levels, the game just gives you a map coordinate and tells you to patrol it. Enemy ships follow historical shipping lanes, react as they come under attack, and behave completely organically (well, for ships, anyway). It's rather engaging, and no two patrols are alike.

So far, it's April of 1940, and I'm on my 6th patrol. I managed to upgrade to the Type VII, an excellent vessel. I've sunk 68,000 tons worth of ships, putting me in second place for the 1st Flotilla (curse you, Gunther Prien!). It's not all champagne and roses, though - on the last patrol I made the mistake of trying to take an armed trawler with my deck guns. We sank her, but were heavily damaged and had to return to base without completing the mission. Three of the crew were killed, including Lt. Adolf Carlewitz, my Watch Officer.

(Sidenote: It's a little weird playing as the Germans, but in a way it's reminded me that, even in a war as clearly 'good guys vs. bad guys' as WWII, most of the people fighting aren't particularly evil or noble, on either side. It's easy to demonize them, but a lot of German soldiers weren't members of the Nazi party, and didn't share Hitler's views. They were people, just like you're a person, and they were just as brave and scared as anyone out there. But I digress.)

3) PILOT: The Dogfightan - I've also been doing a lot of work on my homebrew rpg this last month. Which mostly means, I've been watching lots of dogfighting movies and thinking "oh, that's cool, I should make rules for that." I've also gotten a PDF of Crimson Skies, which is fairly awesome, and has definitely started the creative juices flowing again. With any luck, I'll sort the rules out completely by the end of the month (aside from some of the formatting, all that needs polishing is the Combat section...). That leaves November for me to make it nice and readable (the .txt file I'm using now is just a wall of text), and December to work out a beta test campaign. If I stay on schedule, I could be playing this by winter break. Big 'if' there, but still.

Expect an upload of it here, rpg players - the final version will be a little less than 50 pages, I think. Who said homebrews were rules-light?

4) Warhammer 40k - Of course, though actually not as much as during the summer. I've been playing most Saturdays at the Battle Bunker; it's pretty nice, and has some excellent scenery, but the crowds there are hit-or-miss. Too many unfamiliar faces, for now, but I'm meeting plenty of new people.

My "Black Tau of Doom" (yep, undercoated now) have been performing excellently, but I have the nagging feeling it's only because of the points-level I play. 1000 pts is less than usual, and Tau tend to fair better at smaller games. It doesn't help that my opponents are mostly Space Marines, who tend to do worse at small games (it's the players fault, though - spending 200 points on a close-combat HQ choice isn't the best plan...).

It's time I moved up to 1500 points, I think. I've been toying with two different options: either stay fully mechanized, and add in a Stealth Markerlight Team (stealth suits + marker drones) and a squad of Helios battlesuits (Plasma Rifle + Fusion Blaster; hey, I said I'd been playing Marines!), or go more Hybrid, with a full Broadside squad (yes, with Shield Drones) and Pathfinders. Kind of could go either way; heck, when I go to 2000 points, it'll probably be by using both.

In other news, that Space Wolves Codex came out. Looks interesting, but I've yet to read the whole thing, and anyway I've still got older lists to write.

Okay, that's plenty for now.

Next Time: I fail midterms, drop out of college, get addicted to heroin, and die of AIDS living on a grate in DC.*

Next Time (actually):
1) More shooting! - Mosin Nagant vs. SKS, for the college student on a budget (redundancy is redundant)
2) More Silent Hunter III-ing! - Daring exploits to follow! I'm not a Nazi, I swear!
3) More Homebrew - why is it the most creative thing I do with my time involves quantifying everything?
4) More 40k than you're willing to read - *Mission Accomplished*
-----------------------------------------------
*This is what McCann commonly threatens us with if we don't study for his tests. Just to clarify.