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Let's Play Wing Commander - Gimle Mission #2 - Deathstroke

 We were supposed to be getting out of Gimle pretty soon, but there was one small problem: Ops had detected a number of inbound Kilrathi fighters. They weren’t going to let us leave without a fight.



The Rapiers were with another team today, and we were back in our Raptors. All we had to do was run out to Nav Point 1 and see what was there.

Dralthi. Two full flights of them. Dakhath Deathstroke was leading the second flight, but we'd have to get through the first group to
even worry about that.

Angel broke right, I pulled left and we both went to 'burners. Outnumbered four to one, our only chance was to be aggressive from the start.

Under full guns, the lead Dralthi practically vaporized and then we were fully committed to the merge. I picked a target, engaged, and as soon as that one blew up, I went after another one. I don't recall which one was Dakhath, but I sure wasn't going to let that furry bastard shoot any more ejected pilots.

I had to check my watch when it was over. We'd blasted all eight of them in less than five minutes.

Road To PAX South 2019 - Day 1

All things considered, we made shockingly good time today. I’d wanted to leave at 0900, but final load checks never go perfectly smoothly, and saying goodbye to four kids and a very patient wife is never a short process. There are always tears. Some them aren’t mine. All this meant that we didn’t actually depart the family domicile until 0930, point the nose of the family people hauler South down Interstate 29, and come up to cruising speed.

The Aarons are off on an adventure!

 It was really surprising to see the snow quantities increase as we passed into Missouri and even Kansas. We seemed to be driving into a weather system, and hit some pretty good fog in Kansas. Enough to make me slow down a bit. Mini-me turns out to be a lousy navigator. I could barely get him to ride shotgun at all, he was too busy playing videogames and watching movies in the back seat. Maybe that makes him a good RIO, always watching screens? I don’t know, that’s for someone more knowledgeable than me about such matters to say.

The plan had been to just get to Oklahoma City and call it a night, but we hit OKC before 2000 and I was feeling good, so we kept going. That might have been a mistake. Traffic wasn’t bad, but I’m not sure that navigating through the Dallas freeway system in the dark, while tired, and searching for a hotel is a thing I want to repeat again. At the very least, I know it’s feasible when I make this run again next year!

All that leaves for tomorrow is a relatively short jaunt down to San Antonio, with the vital first In-N-Out stop and some Cane’s Chicken!

Let's Play Valkyria Chronicles 4: Chapter 5: Food Fight

Squad E enters a captured Federation town in search of food and supplies. Interactions with the townspeople are awkward, and there's no food to be found. It's almost like someone got there first. Hey, what's Squad F doing over there?

Road Trips Old and New

The first family road trip that I can remember was in 1984. My parents loaded my brother and me up into an old truck with a camper shell on the back, and we went to Yellowstone. That was the first, and thus far, only time I’ve ever been to that park. I don’t have a lot of memories of that trip, since I was only four at the time, just a few vague recollections of riding in the camper top, sitting in a mechanic’s office when the truck broke down, and maybe a couple of other random fragments. Like I said, I was four.

Over the years, we took a lot more road trips. Never again in that truck, but my parents bought a first-generation Ford Aerostar minivan and towed a twenty-foot Komfort trailer to the Grand Canyon, Pismo Beach, and a variety of other places until 1993. Then they traded the Aerostar for a full-sized Econoline E150, and we went to Alaska. After that trip, the Komfort got traded for a bigger trailer which would be more capable of dealing with a bunch of hungry teenage boys. The family road trip was an annual highlight that only ended for me when the van dropped me off at college in 1997.

I haven’t made nearly as many road trips as an adult, though there have been a few. I love them, there have just been job issues. The last one I took was in 2015, navigating my heavily loaded Saturn Vue from Seattle to Sioux Falls in the big family move. That wasn’t an especially fun trip. I was alone, I had a deadline, and my car was so filled with stuff that I could barely see out the passenger side windows.

My one photo stop, somewhere in Montana, on the way to South Dakota.

But now things are changing. Like I said in yesterday’s vlog, this week I’m off to PAX South, and for the very first time, I’ve got a buddy with me. I’d promised the kids for years that they could start coming with me to PAX when they were thirteen. Why thirteen? Because that’s the age when the convention lets them do their own thing, and not require they have an adult present at all times.

I’m excited. It’s a chance to introduce my favorite convention to Mini-me. It is, I hope, the start of a running tradition that will see a growing crew attend a PAX event every year for a good long time. For this year, it should also be the start of some more meaningful road trips. We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there (as the song says) but there should be time for a few short stops along the way. Mini-Me has never been to Texas before. I’ve never been through Austin, or spent any amount of time in Dallas. I’m looking forward to an exciting trip.

PAX Southbound! Vlog 2019-02

This week I'm off to PAX South 2019 with Jr. Streamer Electroboy11. This is going to be quite the adventure. It's Junior's first ever PAX event, and there's a lot of things that I'm looking forward to!



Next stop, San Antonio!

Let's Play Wing Commander - Gimle Mission #2 - Rapier Test Flight

I have no idea how I lucked into this one. When the pair of shiny F-44A pre-production birds touched down on the Claw, I assumed that if anyone would be taking them out on combat flights, it would be a couple of senior pilots on a milk run. Not so! Instead, Colonel Halcyon picked Angel and me to take the new fighters out on a regular three point CAP.



I can't wait for these things to hit regular squadron use. The Rapier is faster than a Hornet, with shields like a Raptor. It could use a couple of heat-seekers in place of the Iffies, but other than that I have no complaints.

Angel and I took off on patrol. We slipped through a small asteroid field at Nav 1, then ran into a Dralthi patrol at Nav 2. Not much to worry about there. Then we jumped a pair of Gratha a Nav 3. Still no worries. The Rapier really outclasses the cat heavies. I'm going to enjoy flying this bird.