WING IX REPORT #31
From the Desk of Colonel Ricaud ...

FLEET NEWS
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1. YAY BATFO!
Or should that be BatFOFA? Or even FABatFO? Either way, big up, nuff respect, congratulations, and all that sort of malarkey, to High Priest of the TIE Corps Priyum, who was this week promoted to the rank of Fleet Admiral by FC/GA Ronin for all his hard work and efforts keeping the Corps ticking over nicely for the past umpteen months. PriPri has already started work on getting his Medal of Honour with the announcement of planning for Operation Imperial Storm II. ;-) Should be something to look forward to, blowing up the Sovereign again ... :P

2. TACTICAL OFFICE ... STUFF
In a fit of Easter (if you're a Christian) generosity, TAC/AD StarLion has released a whole bunch of new battles for us all to have fun flying, including the latest installment in the long-running/never-ending series of IW-XWA "Rion's Shadow" battles, which are actually very, very good (apart from one which was bugged to jiggery). Also a couple of interesting sounding battles by the names of "The Rooster Trap" and "Barn Yard Beatings". Check 'em out.

3. WEEKLY NEWS ITEM OF THE WEEK THAT'S COMPLETELY INCONSEQUENTIAL AND UNIMPORTANT BUT IT HELPS FILL UP A REPORT
The EH has a new logo ... and it's sort of just like the old logo ... whooo.

4. AGGRESSOR STRIKE FORCE ... UM, STUFF
Few bits of news from our friends in the ASF ... firstly, two of their Wing Commanders have received rank promotions to Lieutenant Colonel: congratulations to Wing XII Commander LC Brucmack and #ISD_Relentless Layabout LC Khadgar! Additionally, following the ASF WoW (Week of War I'm guessing?) and ISD Grey Wolf has retained their place as ASF Flagship (pft, not as much prestige as BG Flagship, right? :P) while second place went to the ISD Vanguard with the ISD Intrepid in third. Congrats to the Grey Wolf Massive!

5. TOKEN STAR WARS MOD NEWS ITEM OF THE WEEK TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE WE ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THEM
Some Star Wars MODs for Quake 2, Half Life, and Unreal Tournament shut down due to lack of interest, sparing Internet gamers the misery of yet another slew of rather mediocre MODs attempting to emulate the success of Counter-Strike.

WING NEWS
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1. HAMMER SQUADRON COMMANDER OPEN
CMDR/MAJ Lohr Zadash yesterday announced his resignation and retirement as Commanding Officer of Hammer Squadron. As many of you may have noticed, his presence has been much reduced lately, and paperwork has suffered as a result of this. So, Lohr has done the honourable thing and taken the course of our former Commodore, retiring due to lack of time. This, of course, means that the position of Hammer CMDR is now open to applications ... any interested parties should send a full resume to val.ricaud@btinternet.com and be able to explain their plans for the squadron, particularly in the field of recruitment/expansion and maintaining Hammer's record as an active and successful unit. All applications should hold the rank of LT+ and have passed the IWATS Squadron Management course with a score of 85% or above. Get them in soon!

2. SPEAKING OF NEW COMMANDERS
After newly-promoted Rear Admiral Dan Malaktos went off to become the new EH Lord Ambassador and further the Relentless Conspiracy To Rule the EH, his replacement as Dagger Squadron Commander and Padawan Wing Commander's Slave was made official in the form of CMDR/CM Leonid DeBastide. Leonid's already launched himself fully into his work leading Dagger Squadron, and appears to be shaping up to fill Dan's shoes very nicely! Keep it up!

3. MR/MISS EH (MELL FOR MR EH!)
The third Mr/Miss EH competition is underway ... with two representatives of the ISD Relentless, in the form of CPT Shae Kitane of Hammer Squadron, and um, me. Frankly, you should be aware just how much I despise these things, and if I find the git who nominated me, I intend to torture him slowly. And if anybody votes for me, I'll cut your fingers off so you can never click a mouse again. Instead, join the Mell for Mr EH campaign, and throw your full weight behind him to ensure that somebody from the Battlegroups wins this thing, and what's more, ensure that I'm spared the embarrassment of going any further. Mell for Mr EH! Vote now @ http://lo.minos.net/ehmrmiss-second.php3.

4. AN APPEAL
For quite a while now Relentless officers have been leading the way in trying to establish a proper, official EH MUD (Mult-User Dungeon, basically an online text-based roleplaying environment). We now have an established server (raptor.nu @ port 4000), as well as a base of regular players, with usually about a dozen people on at any one time, varying due to the time of the day. Work has now started on implementing the actual EH systems, ships, planets, and various other locales, rather than just having the generic Star Wars canon planets. However, it seems nobody can get their hands on a copy of the EH Systems Manual to base this on ...so if anybody has an old version of the Manual lying about anywhere, please send it to val.ricaud@btinternet.com ASAP. Also, any individuals with building experience in MUDs who want to help would also be appreciated. :-)

5. DRINK OF THE WEEK
Straight from the bar of the Stardrifter Lounge, and personally tested and approved by Colonel Ricaud, this week's serving suggestion ...

BLUE BALLS
Ingredients:
1/2 oz Blue Curacao
1/2 oz Malibu rum
1/2 oz Peach schnapps
1/4 oz Sweet and sour
Dash of Sprite
Mixing instructions:
Mix all ingredients. Chill with ice and strain into a shooter glass.

THE WING IX MORALE OFFICE
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A Rant from the Desk of Colonel Steve the Cricket Bat ...

A couple of weeks ago I was in an electrical hardware shop in Carlisle ... Dixons, I think, not that it really matters. I was there because the chum I was with was trying to flog his old HP LaserJet printer. (For some reason he believed that such high street chainstores would be crying out for shonky second-hand equipment. I told him a million times they wouldn't, but he refused to listen). But that's not that this tale is about. No, indeedy. What I want to talk about is what was happening elsewhere in the shop while he was waiting in the queue. And what was happening was this ...

A long bank of PCs, about 20 of them, were arranged in such a way that they were clearly meant to be saying, "Hey, you, come and try us." Yeah, that's exciting, I thought ... like "come and have a go at clicking icons on Windows 98". Scintillating. Still, one man's meat and all that, eh, because sure enough, down the far end, there was the punter from Hell. It was a woman, with her kid in tow. I tuned into their conversation (as you do), and it soon became apparent that the kid (age about 12) was to be getting a PC for his birthday. The budget for this gift, it seemed, was virtually limitless (spoilt brat). However, the brilliant thing was that while the kid knew exactly what he was talking about, his mum wasn't listening. She was trying to "pretend" to her son (and herself) that, as an adult, she knew best. You know? Oh, and she was wearing a fur coat by the way: a mere detail perhaps, but one worth mentioning so you'll hate her as much as I did. So anyway, there she was, tapping pompously on keyboards and generally being obnoxious. Excellent.

It'd be about three minutes before she worked her way up to the PIII 700 I was standing by, I realised, and so I got to work immediately. Zapping into DOS, I loaded QBASIC, and typed in a simple program. I'd done the same thing before, years ago, in a similar situation in Croydon, although the computers were C64s and ZX Spectrums rather than PCs. The end result was hopefully going to be the same, though, so, having typed the sixth and final line, I selected RUN from the menu bar. And the program ran.

Perfect timing ... the annoying fur coat woman arrived precisely eight seconds later, he boy still explaining that he wanted a AMD 1Ghz processor with 128MB RAM. Brushing him aside for the umpteenth time, she tapped at the P700's keyboard, setting off an "INKEY$" command. Up on the monitor popped a simple but effective message: "F**k off you old slag." She took her finger off the key. The message disappeared. She pressed it again. "F**k off you old slag." And again. And again. Her son was delighted. I was delighted. She went purple and swanned off in a swirl of mink to collect the manager, leaving me just enough time to return the machine to real DOS and type CLS ...

"I'm telling you, it swore at me," she said, tapping furiously and spelling out the word "vvvvvvvvvhhhhhhhh". "Hmm," said the manager, who only half believed her (the other half of him was thinking that maybe she was a well-to-do alcoholic/schizophrenic).

Feeling somewhat thwarted, but not knowing how or why, fur coat woman changed tack: she began to rant and rave at the manager on tangents, covering several topics as she progressed. "Computers" and "Evil" were words used in one sentence, for example. Then she switched to Dunblane and guns. The manager was nodding, but wasn't really listening. Then she said something about dun dun bullets, meaning, I suppose, dum dum bullets. Then she switched to knives, launching into a tirade about how all knives should be banned, not just some of them. It was at this point that my chum reappeared ...

"They don't want it," he said, disgruntled, talking about his dodgy HP LaserJet printer. I told him that I'd told him so, and he concurred. As we left the shop I could still hear fur coat woman; whose very last words, as we drifted from earshot, were "potato peeler". Wow, potato peeler.

So now I'm writing this, a couple of weeks down the line - yet I can still hear fur coat woman's parting words as clear as day: potato peeler. Superb! I assume she was still on the "ban all knives" stance, but can only guess as to whether she was suggesting that even potato peelers should be banned, or, alternatively, that potato peelers should be allowed. Personally I'm all for allowing them. And I'm also all for using grey areas of the law to kind of "slip things things through the net". To this end I've set up a mail order company, which I'm calling Slayer Kitchenware. Send an SAE with a £10 note for the full Slayer Kitchenware brochure.

POSTINGS & PROMOTIONS
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CMDR/MAJ Dan Malaktos from Command Dagger Squadron to Lord Ambassador W.E.F. 09.04.01
COM/VA Andronicus from Command ISD Relentless to Reserves W.E.F. 09.04.01
RSV/CPT Tom from Reserves to Sword Squadron 2-2 W.E.F. 10.04.01
FL/LCM Leonid DeBastide from Dagger Squadron 3-1 to Command Dagger Squadron W.E.F. 11.04.01
FM/CM Ric Gravin from Dagger Squadron 2-2 to Command Vampire Squadron W.E.F. 11.04.01
SL Escarith Wolfbane to Lieutenant W.E.F. 13.04.01
TRN/CT Storm from PLT Daedalus to Shield Squadron 2-2 W.E.F. 15.04.01
MAJ Lohr Zadash from Command Hammer Squadron to Reserves W.E.F. 15.04.01

AWARDS
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FM/LT Mosh - Imperial Security Medal - from CMDR/CM Da'emon Narshay for excellent activity

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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"We have hideous transmutations, throttlings, blood-spewings, really big needles, draining corpses mixed with the Eszterhasian sex-is-death phobia, gratuitous rat massacres, gratuitous massacrings by rats, heads pierced with giant spikes, mechanical insect cunnilingus, some of the worst pick-up lines ever devised by man, and crimes against fashion deserving of the bastinado. An average day in the FMC."
- Vice Admiral Andronicus, our beloved former COM ... he shall be remembered. :-)

In the Service of the Empire.

Colonel V. G. Ricaud
Officer Commanding Wing IX
WC/COL Ricaud/Wing IX/ISD Relentless
IC/GSx2/SS/BSx5/ISMx8/MoT-1gh/LoC-PSx69/DFCx2/MoC-6BoC-1SoC-1GoC/CoLx2/LoAx5/OV-3E [CAVL] {IWATS-M/1-SM/1}