Last one for 2018! Grades & Goals! Vlog 2018-52

Last vlog for 2018! Can't believe I managed to do this every week for a year!

With that in mind, here are my final grades for my major 2018 initiatives, and my general plans for 2019.


Fitness - B
Content - C
Finances - D+

Going to do better next year!

Let's Play Wing Commander 1: McAuliffe Mission 3

I was going to miss flying with Paladin. He sure wasn't flashy, but you knew exactly where he was, and that he had your back. I hadn't realized how valuable that was back in the academy.


For what would be our last mission as a flight pair, the Colonel had us back on escort duty. Confed had a lot of heavy cargo coming in, both to fortify the system, and to resupply before our next jump. Not that the Cats were going to make it easy. They'd turned one of their best loose somewhere in system, and were putting up a massive fight.

Given that, I shouldn't have been surprised that we bumped into a four-ship of Krants halfway to the jump point. Paladin broke right to take the lead, and I burned in underneath to try and catch at least one of the big medium fighters from behind before its pilot could react. After that it just dissolved into a massive furball, fighters going every which way. Paladin drew a lot more than his fair share of fire, which allowed me to knock down most of the enemies.

That issue solved, we pressed on to the jump point. The Drayman transport jumped in right on schedule, and we started for home. That's when Bhurak and his two wingmen (wingcats?) jumped us. I knew Bhurak had me maneuvered, but he was still flying a Salthi. While Paladin rolled in on the wingmen, I went straight for Starkiller. Intel had said that the Kilrathi ace liked to launch his missiles at max range and then close for gun kills. I figured if I closed fast enough, I could negate his maneuvering advantage and bring my Scim's mass drivers to bear faster.

Against a heavier fighter, I would have been toast. As it was, I swear I saw one of Bhurak's rockets just pass my right wing, then I opened up with the mass drivers. Maybe the cat was used to people running from him. Maybe he just didn't expect a human to play chicken. I don't know. What I do know, is that I flew through an expanding glass cloud that used to be a Salthi, and the cat hadn't managed to knock my shields down.

After that it was an easy 2v2 cleanup of the remaining hostiles with Paladin. Then home to the Claw for a bit of R&R before the next jump.

Note: Success in this mission will send players to the Gimle System to fly Raptors. Failure will send players to the Brimstone System, still in Scimitars.

Uncommon Heroism

Via The Dreamy Dodo blog, I came across this picture of Cessna A-37s, Northrup F-5s, and a single odd Cessna L-19 aboard the deck of the USS Midway (CVA-41) on their way to Guam after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Sing it with me now: "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn't the same..."

How that Bird Dog (the L-19) got there is one hell of a story. As Saigon was falling, South Veitnam Air Force Major Buang-Ly loaded his wife and five children into the two seat observation aircraft and headed out to sea from the island of Con Son. He didn't really have a plan beyond "get out of here and hope to find an American ship."

What he finally found as an aircraft carrier loaded with other aircraft, that he was sure he could land on. What happened next was recorded from the flight deck of the Midway.



According to NavyHistory.org, Major Buang's several passes over the carrier, were attempts to drop notes signaling his intentions. The first couple blew away, and he finally resorted to stuffing his third note into his pistol and dropping that onto the deck. Note the look of relief on his wife's face when she exits the aircraft.

In the linked article, there's a bit of follow-up as well. Major Buang and his family eventually settled in Orlando. In 2014, at a small ceremony held during Sun 'n Fun, Major Buang and his extended family were presented a special aircraft model honoring his historic flight. Major Buang's aircraft itself now hangs in the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

I may have to go through my old photos and see if that aircraft is in the background of any of my shots of pointy jets.

The Cessna L-19 (O-1) was derived from the Cessna 170, which is a four-seat, high-wing taildragger. The biggest difference in the militarized aircraft was the tandem seating arrangement for the pilot and observer, making the L-19 the largest two-seat aircraft Cessna ever built. Even so, that must have been a seriously tight squeeze for a family of seven.

Merry Christmas Christmas Music

Merry Christmas. I hope that you enjoy some time with family this Christmas, and remember who Christmas is all about. Please enjoy some of my favorite Christmas tunes, if you like.

Christmas Wishes 2018 - Vlog 2018-51

From my family to you: Merry Christmas

Let's Play Wing Commander 1: McAuliffe Mission #2 - Destroyer Strike

Finally a chance to do something other than patrols or escorting fat, slow transports. McAuliffe was heating up, at least that's what the Colonel said, and he was sending strike pairs out to engage and neutralize possible threats that had popped up on radar.



It seemed like the guys in the bar earlier must have been part psychic, since we'd just been discussing the best way to take out an enemy capital ship. Maniac, of course, favored an agressive strategy of burning in, popping the cap ship, then dealing with the fighter escort. Iceman, and everyone with a brain, preferred to engage the escorts first, then deal with the big hostile once there wasn't anything left that could shoot us in the back.

 The flight of Dralthi we blundered into halfway to the nav point was just bad luck. Certainly for them, since Paladin and I made short work of them. At Nav 1, we rolled in against a bigger threat: two Krants escorting the Ralari destroyer we'd come to destroy.

I gave Paladin the lead and burned hard to come in under the trailer. On paper, the Scim and Krant woere pretty close matches. The Krant had slight edge in armor, I had a little more firepower. When the trailing fighter couldn't turn in fast enough to hang with me, firepower won. I went underneath him at full burner, then cut my drives and pitched around to put myself on his tail. One full burst from my Mass Drivers was all it took. That gave me time to help Paladin, who was struggling with the other fighter. The cat must have gotten target fixated as Paladin tried to extend and clear, allowing me to call Fox Two and put a heater up the Krant's tailpipe.

After that, the Ralari was just a matter of weathering the flak and unloading guns into the engines. Problem solved, and we were RTB with not too much worse than some paint scratches and half-empty missile racks.

Just a Five Minute Job - A Home Improvement Metaphor for Tech Debt

One of the most interesting panel discussions that I participated in during Agile + DevOps 2018 centered around Technical Debt and what we can do about it. We found ourselves using a metaphor of home improvement projects a few times - especially the idea that you don't always know how big the task is when you start. With that in mind, I'd like to present a short recap of a recent "five minute" easy home improvement fix I found myself in.

The Problem:My girls share a room which contains one of the air returns for the heater. The grate covering this duct was no longer staying in the wall. This had led to at least one feline excursion into the ductwork, and now required that a trashcan or other large object block the grate to keep the cats away.

The Estimate:
This isn't a difficult fix. All I needed to do was grab my drill, zip in a couple of drywall anchors, drive the screws back into the wall, and done. Five minutes. Max.

The Reality:
First off, the grate cover is the wrong size for the hole. What I really should have done was get a new cover, or enlarge the hole, but one of those things would require spending extra money, and the other would require measuring and cutting additional bits of drywall. Both were out of scope.

After grate removal. Can't expand the hole to the left because there's a wall stud there.

My first fix was exactly as specified in the estimate. That worked fine, right up until I realized that the screws were now too short to properly open the drywall anchors. Okay, I'll get some new screws.

Then the screw on the right drove the drywall anchor straight through the sheet of drywall and into the five inch gap in the wall that I didn't realize was there.

Feline help from Romana the Time Kitty did not decrease the task duration.

No problem, I can go grab a couple of 2x4 ends, trim them up, fill the gap between the walls, and drive a 3" wood screw in there.

Which I did. Total time, between trimming 2x4 scraps, swapping out screws, removing busted drywall anchors, and oh yes, removing a helpful cat: forty-five minutes. That's 9x longer than my original estimate.

Yeah, this drywall anchor isn't going to work. I don't know why the original grate was set up with that screw so close to the edge of the hole.

To bring this full circle, it's the same issue with technical debt. You don't know what you don't know. Even so, technical debt must be handled. If I'd known I needed to trim up some lumber to fill a gap, etc, my original estimate would have been a lot more realistic. As it is, sometimes you just have to pull a task off the board, set aside 10x whatever your time estimate is, and hope this task is actually what it seems. Ever time, the set of unknown unknowns in your infrastructure will (hopefully) decrease. Every time I dig into a fix in this house I learn a bit more about it, and shrink my list of unknowns a little more. Eventually I'll know this place as well as the builder. I hope.

Let's Play Valkyria Chronicles 4! Chapter 3 - Rangers In The Storm

More backstory! Well, sort of. What we have here is some light-hearted squad hijinks that turn silly, plus some mandatory anime silliness between Claude and Riley. Then combat. Lots of combat.



The whole thing ends on a really tough note though, as we finally get some backstory on what happened between Riley and Claude when they were kids. It's the first time the story gets dark for a little bit, but it's not the last.

Remember, this is a war story. Not everyone gets a happy ending. Not everyone started with a happy beginning either.

Around The Web - Resurrecting Leisure Suit Larry

How do you resurrect a raunchy sex-comedy adventure game icon of the '80s and '90s for 2018? I had kept wondering that before finally getting a review copy of Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry.

A lot of the best dialog moments come from interacting with Lefty - the
long-time proprieter of Lefty's Bar, who's seen all the changes in the world
in the past 30 years.

The answer is, "very blandly."

Here's the thing: a Larry game set in 2018 should have been comedy gold. And with the right writing team willing to take some heat, I think it could have been. This is the Era of That's Not Funny, where men can be women if they feel like it, consent videos are a thing, and half of millennials think that just asking someone in the office out on a date is sexual harassment.

Or, to be fair, if the writers wanted to take this on from a left-wing, SJW angle, there's plenty of easy targets in incels, MGTOW, and pick-up artists to mock.

Unfortunately, what we got was a blandly competent adventure game with whatever bits of humor are unlikely to offend anyone. It still probably isn't enough to avoid some group or other getting offended.

Monday Vlogs - What Went Poorly in 2018? Vlog 2018-50

Retrospective Part 2. What went wrong this year?

1. Finances. Still treading water with debt.
2. Deadlines. Missed a lot more of those than I should have. I need to work on not over-committing myself.
3. Speaking of over-committing, I grossly underestimated how much of my spring and summer time would be consumed by kid sports and half-marathon training.

That's probably the big three. Part Three will talk about what steps I'm planning for 2019 to continue to build on success and improve on my failures.

Let's Play Wing Commander - McAuliffe System, Mission 1 - Don't Mine Me...

New system, new ship, new wingman. It was great to fly with Paladin on my wing, but to be honest, I could have done with the transfer into the Blue Devils. Nothing against the squadron itself, but like Iceman warned me, the Scimitar is a gun heavy slug. Oh well, the Colonel sets the squadrons, not me.



My first mission with Paladin was a simple four point patrol. We ran into some Dralthi at Nav 1 and made quick work of them. The Scim may not be artful, but against the flying bullseyes, burning in and dumping a full capacitator of mass driver shots is all the art you need.

The minefield at Nav 3 was another matter. I don't know Paladin managed to slice through that field the way he did, but I was dodging those damn magnetic mines the whole time, and praying my shields would hold up. At least I got to take my frustrations out on a wing of Salthi that were hanging around near Nav 4.

Paladin's a good wingman. You can always count on him to be right where he should be. He likes to let pilots learn by experience, and only intervene when he needs to. Part of me is surprised that he's not an academy IP, but having his experience embedded in the squadron is definitely a huge win for every one of us younger pilots who are willing to listen.

He Can See Clearly Now..

It was bound to happen eventually. With five kids, the odds that at least one of them would inherit my wonky eye genetics were pretty close to 1-1. So when The Centurion (TC) noted that he couldn’t see the clock on the DVR from the couch, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

The face of a happy kid who can read a clock across a room again.

One visit to my eye-doc later, and we had a diagnosis: near-sighted, just like his Old Man. At least TC was happy about getting glasses. I got my first pair of external eyes around the same age, and don’t recall being nearly so sanguine, either at the time, or for a number of years after.

“But Aaron,” someone from the back asks, “what was your problem with corrective lenses? Didn’t you enjoy being able to see the details around you?”

X-15 Pilot photo via Wikipedia

 Well, yes, I did, and that part was very nice. However, let’s take a look at the picture above, shall we? Among the many things that these men have in common, note the distinct lack of any kind of corrective lenses on their faces. See, test pilots and fighter jocks didn’t wear glasses. And just like that, I passed through one of the first forks in a very long road that would put me where I am today.

I’d like to think that my general antipathy towards eyewear helped me deal with TC better. He doesn’t (as far as I know) harbor fighter pilot ambitions, not that it matters for recruitment standards these days anyway, but he does enjoy playing sports, and I had to assure him that he’ll still be able to do that. To my pleasant surprise, he’s also been called “Four-Eyes” a whole lot less than I did back in the ‘80s. Score one for the kids of today, I guess.

Lets Play Valkyria Chronicles 4 - Interlude: Origin Story

This game gets surprisingly deep sometimes. Squad E's origin story goes to some interesting places, and Claude is shown taking a very mature approach (mostly) to learning how to lead his new team.



Obviously Squad E has had some discipline issues, but Raz is going to improve as the story goes on. What happened to Kai though?

Around the Web - A Fallout 76 Review

Over at Marooners' Rock, my collegue Alex took on the task of reviewing Fallout 76.

Image via Marooners' Rock and Bethesda.

Despite the multitude of arguably offensive flaws, I am having a really good time with Fallout 76. Although, I must admit that I am a member of the game’s super specific target audience. Built on the framework established by Fallout 4, which was built on surprisingly old Creation Engine, Fallout 76 feels more like an ambitious mod or expansion than a new game. That aside, the setting of West Virginia, being able to traverse the Wasteland with friends, an abundance of new creatures to fight, and lots of items to collect keeps me coming back for more.

 Fallout 76 is a multiplayer survival title that focuses on a much smaller pool of players on a server rather than the framerate crashing masses found in an MMO. Imagine Fallout 4 with the ability for others to run around as well. When it works (we’ll get to the downsides shortly) playing Fallout with a group is pretty awesome. Firefights are easier to manage with more people and exploring with others can be extremely engaging. West Virginia is captured fairly well, focusing on the general outline than actual realism. This means that certain areas of the map have been shifted a bit and for those familiar with the state it can get a bit confusing. Either way, it is incredible to come upon the capitol building in Charleston or walk the remnants of the Morgantown Airport.

I'm glad Alex is having fun. The thing is, I'm a huge Fallout series fan too, but his negatives for Fallout 76 pretty well cover why I haven't bought the game yet. Pure and simple, I don't want a multiplayer Fallout game. Or maybe I might (actually, I'd love a true Fallout MMORPG), but I just don't want this multiplayer game. Certainly not in the state it's currently in. Maybe sometime next year, once Bethesda has worked all the bugs out, released their DLC, and decided to do their inevitable Game of the Year version, I'll pick it up. Until then, this is the first, and hopefully only, Fallout game where I'm content to just watch from the sidelines.

What Went Right in 2018? Vlog 2018-49

The end of another year always puts me in a retrospective mood. This year, since my finances and schedule are already largely locked in for December, that mood started a little earlier. I'm going to take the next few Vlogs to do a bit of a retrospective on 2018, focusing on what went well, what went wrong, and what I need to improve for next year.

1. Fitness: I ran my first half-marathon this year, and am definitely in the best shape that I've been in since my late teens.
2. Productivity: The Bullet Journal method absolutely revolutionized my productivity this year. After a rocky January, things really started to come together where my content output was concerned.
3. Streaming: I finally made Affiliate! Now to make my first dollar...

Of course, it wasn't all blinding success. Next week I'll take a look at what went wrong this year.

Let's Play Wing Commander 1 - Enyo Mission 2 - Babysitting Duty

(Note: since mission recaps are kind of boring, and I've had this head-canon for something like twenty-five years, I'm going to start writing these as fiction from the POV of Bill "Maverick" Loridan.)

The Drayman transport was just painfully slow. I wanted him to go faster, or at least give me a reason to do barrel rolls around the ship, but Spirit probably wouldn't have approved of that. Still, the little Hornet felt like she was practically begging to be wrung out proper-like. It was almost a relief when we finally ran into a pair of Salthi light fighters lurking near the first nav point.



"Spirit, fight's on. You take the trailer, I'll get the leader." A double-click on the comm was all I needed in return. Unlike some of the other folks on the Claw, Spirit wasn't especially talkative during missions. Still, she was a good pilot, and burned ahead, aiming at the trailing enemy fighter. I throttled up to engage the lead fighter, who made a serious mistake in turning to engage Spirit as she burned past him.

It was the last mistake that Kilrathi would ever make.  The moment he turned his back to me, my lasers cut through his shields and armor. I turned my attention to the second fighter just in time to see Spirit snap a perfect Dumbfire shot that caught the other Salthi amidship.

The second encounter was almost anti-climatic by comparison.  The pair of flying bullseyes waiting for us at the jump point never stood a chance. The Dralthi is a piece of junk that looks like it combines poor visibility, lousy armor, and light armament into a package fit only for target practice. I'm glad they're on the enemy's side, not ours.

 The post-mission debrief was pretty normal. Colonel Halcyon congratulated us on getting the transport safely away, and on getting ourselves back safely. Probably the biggest news was that I was being transferred out of the Killer Bees to go fly the Scimitar. Not sure how I feel about that just yet.

2019 And Beyond - Plans for the Caster Clan

I briefly mentioned in Monday's Vlog that my Twitch Channel (see also, the thing at the top of the blog) crossed two exciting milestones recently. First, the channel finally met Twitch's qualifications for Affiliate, meaning that I can start making a little bit of money off the channel by accepting Bits and monthly subscriptions! Second, Mini-Me has decided to hold down a regular Sunday afternoon streaming slot with his own show!

The thing is, none of this was really my plan when I started streaming in early 2015. At the time, my goal was to create an additional where I could promote th things I was writing, and maybe generate a little side income.

What my vision for the channel has become is to make it a place where people can be encouraged to chase their dreams. Where I hope seeing an average guy do slightly crazy things like run marathons, lift weights, bake, and learn motorcycle restoration inspires people to get off their butts and try something new. Along the way it’s turning into a big family channel, because there’s no way I can exclude my kids from these endeavors.

Cruise at 175mph, 510lbs useful load with full fuel, 4+ hour endurance... That'd put a lot more places within reach
without having to deal with TSA! (official phot from Van's Aircraft)

Since Adventure Girl also wants her own show, it seems like a name change for the channel is in order. It's not the Shadowcaster show anymore, it's all about the Caster Clan, since this is turning into some sort of crazy family streaming team.

That's both exciting and terrifying for me. Truthfully, some days I think it would probably be best for the kids if we turned Amish, and raised them up without any TV or Internet at all. Unfortunately, that genie's pretty well out of the bottle, and not going back in. The next best thing seems to be if the kids want to create content, then let it happen in an arena that I can exercise at least some moderation and control over. My hope is that the kids will learn some valuable lessons about interacting with people, having a professional attitude, and time management. Maintaining a broadcast schedule is tough, and so is dealing with people, especially the occasional troll.

Who knows, maybe this will all take off, and in a couple of years, I'll be a partnered streamer broadcasting family adventures as we assemble an RV-14, Waiex-B, or Kitfox S7 Super Sport in our garage!

It's better than planning on winning a MegaMillions jackpot, at the very least.

Let's Play Valkyria Chronicles 4 - Chapter 2: Tanks? You're Welcome!

We've got all our units introduced, so now we can get down to the meat of the game. This chapter starts off by introducing the Headquarters Camp, where players will spend most of their time in between missions managing and training personel, upgrading weapons, and shifting around equipment.

But all that menu stuff is boring. It's necessary from a gameplay standpoint, but to watch? SKIP! So I do.



The battle is interesting for being split into two parts. Sneaking around in the fog is interesting, especially when you're not sure whether you're going to find a wooden dummy, or a heavy tank that's going to eat your lunch. Moving fast is the key to an A rank, and I managed to do that on the first go.

Around The Web - Backlog Burndown #29 - The Last Mission

An old game isn't really complete for me until I write about it. That's why my most recent Backlog Burndown column featured my (probably) final thoughts on Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance.

I have a lot of mixed emotions about this series. Finishing it was exciting, because it meant I could move on to my massive Wing Commander playthrough. But it's also bittersweet, because I know there aren't any more X-Wing games, even though with seven additional movies and three long-running TV shows to work with, there really should be by now.

In truth, I'm not sure Disney and EA quite know what to do with the Star Wars gaming franchise. Oh, there's been Star Wars: Battlefront II, which has evolved into a decent game in the year since it was released, and of course Star Wars: The Old Republic is still trucking along, but that's been it for a long while. Here's hoping that 2019 will at least see the release of Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order

Ten Years of Extra Life: Vlog 2018-48

Back in 2008, the very first Extra Life charity fundraiser raised a few thousand dollars as a bunch of gamers, decided to help a sick little girl and defy some media stereotypes at the same time.

Ten years later, we've raised over $40 million for sick and injured kids around the world. I haven't been in every 24-hour marathon over the past ten years, but I'm proud to say that I was there for the beginning, and have been able to return as an active participant for the past three years as well.


Anyone interested in donating to Extra Life can do so here.

One of my favorite things about the charity is that they're partnered with the Children's Miracle Network hospitals, meaning that money donated stays local, it doesn't go to some random location. I fundraise for my local hospital, Sanford Children's which is where my kids would go if they were ill.