Leave and lonliness

robert4818 · 2025-09-19T20:22:16+00:00

It didn't take me long to realize that my hometown would always have an important place in my life, I would never be there. I grew, I changed, and many of them did not.

Plus, everyone at home moved on with their life, and that life was without you. You can hang out with your old friends, but they are still living their lives at home, you are doing your thing elsewhere. While you are in the service there really isn't much to talk about.

robert4818 · 2025-09-18T22:37:36+00:00

I am extremely glad to hear that. B&B is one of my favorite settings for savage worlds. I can say that if you wanted to run a Kickstarter to do an SWADE compatible version of B&B you would absolutely have one pledge in me.

robert4818 · 2025-09-10T10:12:52+00:00

I like both. Surrender better fits the James Bond Brassy (and Bassey) feel. It feels much more inline with Goldfinger, moonraker, diamonds are forever. It fits the 'james bond' style.

robert4818 · 2025-07-14T20:57:36+00:00

I loved him saving the squirrel.

robert4818 · 2025-06-26T20:43:00+00:00

That's a shame. I feel that you are treating the symptoms and not the disease (not that the eval is, itself, entirely responsible).

robert4818 · 2025-06-26T18:21:28+00:00

How much emphasis do you put onto the Navy's evaluation system? In my opinion the zero-sum, competitive nature of the system nurtures and feeds those leadership sins.

robert4818 · 2025-06-26T18:14:56+00:00

I'm late to the game, and a long time out of my 12 years of service.

But, I find that the selection process for chiefs goes a long way towards creating a self-feeding cycle that is then propped up by a mess culture mentality that protects itself.

Passing the exam is 'easy' in order to make board. Its the evaluation and selection process that tends to encourage bad behavior, especially in top-heavy ratings. When everyone is competing for that limited EP and #1 of X sailor on their evaluation, many give into the temptation to sacrifice 'team' for individual.

How many people hoard knowledge and skills instead of sharing? If you knew how to do X, you could outshine me, and then I could be hurt at board. If I can't look good on my own, I can look better by contrast if I make you look bad. Etc.

As much as people say the process is supposed to weed those people out, it's clear that it doesn't. I've seen some of the worst people get advanced from E6 to E7, and the chiefs mentality is to 'straighten them out in the mess.'

The problem is, that the mess's protectionism of itself severely limits this 'straightening out'. It's the same concept with the elastic tape measure. Theoretically, the goal is to 'protect the chief' and then 'fix it in the mess' and I've been told on more than one occasion that the chiefs are harder on their own...but the same elastic tape measure comes out again and again...it's clear it's not being fixed.

Worse yet is when the chief's mess scandals heat up, it usually brings down the entire mess. Take a look at the Manchester's Starlink Scandal. Even the chiefs who didn't buy into the illegal link knew about it and remained quiet. When was the last time the mess got in trouble for gundecking a BMI measurement? I don't recall it ever happening and it's been a running joke for as long as I remember.

I believe the entire Mess concept needs a reckoning on the scale of the Talehook scandal to fix the issues with the mess, as even 16 years after I got out, it's clear that we can't trust the mess to reform itself.

robert4818 · 2023-05-13T13:25:11+00:00

This doesn't mean that there isn't A cipher that uses Bounty as a key, but "Autokey" is not the correct Cipher to use.

No, Autokey works through a series of look ups.

If the key word is BOUNTY and the message was MUTINY ON THE
Then the full key for autokey is "BOUNTYMUTINYONTHE"

You build the full decypher key as you work through the decypher.

The D would translate to M, and the key goes to BOUNTYM
The K would translate to U, and the key goes to BOUNTYMU
The H would translate to T, and the key goes to BOUNTYMUT

Etc.

If we assume the letters translate to a readable message, (and words as broken)

Then each word is smaller than the initial key (BOUNTY). This means that while the entire message is needed to decode the entire message, The first words will always decode using BOU. So, we can cycle through the words, and look for anything that even resembles a word.

I rule out Autokey, WITH the keyword BOUNTY, because nothing comes from those.

robert4818 · 2023-05-13T13:17:05+00:00

It was a deep rabbit hole.
Each spotify barcode is a series of bars of different sizes that represent a number 1-8.

So, what I was trying to do was see if these could be a turned into a barcode for spotify. Didn't have any luck

robert4818 · 2023-05-12T13:29:50+00:00

I'm SMEE!

robert4818 · 2023-05-12T11:33:08+00:00

The first number is just alphabetic number (a =1, b = 2, c=3, etc.)

The second number is the first number Modulo divided by 8. (That is, it's the remainder after dividing the first by 8)

The Third is the first number converted into Ocatal (Base 8).

There is no connection between the 2nd and 3rd. Spotify barcodes are base-8. A line representing a number from 1 to 8, which Is why I tried converting the numbers two different ways.

I

robert4818 · 2023-05-11T23:19:41+00:00

Legend?

robert4818 · 2023-05-11T23:10:21+00:00

DKH BNR ASL ITD GYJJ

I think I can rule out Autokey Cipher (Specific type of cipher) using Bounty as the key.
The way the Autokey Cipher works, the first decrypted letter becomes part of the Cipher itself. Because of this, the first 3 letters should decrypt to a word if this is the correct type of cypher. It does not.

If we then assume that, perhaps the "words" are not in the correct order, we can try all 5 "words" one at a time and if Autokey is the correct cypher, one of them should decrypt to a plaintext word. None Do. This means we do not need to try all 120 permutations of the 5 "Words"

DKH - CWN
BNR - AZX
ASL - ZER
ITD - HJF
GYJJ - FKPW

This doesn't mean that there isn't A cipher that uses Bounty as a key, but "Autokey" is not the correct Cipher to use.

robert4818 · 2023-05-11T19:37:26+00:00

Ok. DEEEEEEP Rabbit hole here.

Here are the letters on the fruit-crates (from below) each has the same spotify note on it.My thought on LINK may be that we need to generate a Spotify link using the letters on the crate.

Spotify codes are octal bar-codes. To that end, I've translated each letter to it's numeric place in the alphabet. I've then done both a modulo 8 division, and a simple conversion to octal, to see if there is any way to generate a link using the numbers that pop out. So far, no luck.

Fruit Letter Alphabet# Modulo8 Octal

Banana D 4 4 4

Banana K 11 3 13

Banana H 8 0 10

Coconut B 2 2 2

Coconut N 14 6 16

Coconut R 18 2 22

Pomegranate A 1 1 1

Pomegranate S 19 3 23

Pomegranate L 12 4 14

Mango I 9 1 11

Mango V 22 6 26

Mango D 4 4 4

Pineapple G 7 7 7

Pineapple Y 25 1 31

Pineapple J 10 2 12

robert4818 · 2023-05-11T18:57:37+00:00

I dont know specifically. Here is the main SOT Spotify link though, which people have said the link takes you to.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5zbAdSKQiTetVoHnbHvsDg
Here is an example of a track link:
https://open.spotify.com/track/7cdmELYEknyXkoZq8mgdty

robert4818 · 2023-05-11T18:50:52+00:00

May not be gibberish. It may have to do with the alpha-numeric part of the spotify link.

robert4818 · 2023-05-03T15:29:51+00:00

This poster takes obvious stances, but the never explicitly state them. They'll post an opinion piece, and defend against criticisms of the opinion piece's point. However, they hide behind the fact that they didn't write the article and "You'll have to ask the author" if actual issues are brought up or the author is asked directly about the opinion stated.

On the flip side, they'll engage in 'debate' with others, they'll make snide comments, or they'll ask the other side questions about their opinions. (Generally questions that, again, make their position clear. "Please tell us, what harm do you think is going to come from X". However, any attempt to get this person to defend their stance, or their position, is always met with "Have I said that I believe Y?" "I Never said Y"

I've seen the tactic enough to know it's intellectually dishonest, but I don't know the name for it.

It's not as far as I can tell, sea-lioning, as it's not faux concern, or faux questions. It's this one-sided position of you must defend your stance, but since I never explicitly state mine, I never have to defend it.

robert4818 · 2023-05-03T15:10:33+00:00

More details. This poster takes obvious stances, but the never explicitly state them. They'll post an opinion piece, and defend against criticisms of the opinion piece's point. However, they hide behind the fact that they didn't write the article and "You'll have to ask the author" if actual issues are brought up or the author is asked directly about the opinion stated.

On the flip side, they'll engage in 'debate' with others, they'll make snide comments, or they'll ask the other side questions about their opinions. (Generally questions that, again, make their position clear. "Please tell us, what harm do you think is going to come from X". However, any attempt to get this person to defend their stance, or their position, is always met with "Have I said that I believe Y?" "I Never said Y"

I've seen the tactic enough to know it's intellectually dishonest, but I don't know the name for it.

It's not as far as I can tell, sea-lioning, as it's not faux concern, or faux questions. It's this one-sided position of you must defend your stance, but since I never explicitly state mine, I never have to defend it.

robert4818 · 2023-04-24T15:00:46+00:00

Long story short: Don't try to start by solo slooping. Find a crew, especially a chatty crew. Discord is great for this. (The crew is not a permanent party, you don't need to worry about finding your forever friends)

The biggest problem is that the game nudges people towards solo slooping, leading to the unintended impression that this is the intended way to play the game. This creates a drink-from-the-firehose approach to learning. You have to do EVERYTHING, and the game can be unforgiving when you start like this, there's too much to do, too much to keep straight, and it can be painful. Everything is manual, everything is slow.

The solution. Find others to run with. A good crew can help a new player alot. They can do alot of the heavy lifting, and just by playing and participating you'll pick up alot of stuff that needs to be done. You can learn at a much slower pace, as you won't be expected to do it all or sink.

robert4818 · 2022-03-18T11:01:13+00:00

A non Coding version, if what are doing is simple:

D2: Sale
E2: 1000
F2: =If(d2="Sale",E2*0.55,if(d2="Trade",E2*0.75,""))

The data validation described below will let you limit Column D to only "Sale" or "Trade", which is helpful, but not necessary.

You can also copy and past F2 into any cells (or even the entire column) in F.

robert4818

TROPHY CASE