WING IX REPORT #29
From the Desk of General Ricaud ...

FLEET NEWS
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1. RONIN RESIGNS!
In shock news today, FC/GA Ronin announced his sudden departure from the position of Fleet Commander of the Emperor's Hammer Strike Fleet, which he has held since the club's inception in 1995. "I'm getting quite bored out of my skull," he said in an official statement, "and anyway, I've made enough money from the club which I've secretly funnelled to my offshore account for me to live comfortably in Brazil for the rest of my life. Cya suckers!" A new Fleet Commander has been announced in the form of Grand Admiral SureFire, who is to assume official duties shortly. Formerly-Lieutenant Colonel SureFire was voted into the office by the Command Staff by a 100% majority, with all CS officers other than Sector Admiral Kawolski strangely suffering "e-mail problems" preventing them from voting. XO/SA Kawolski said that he was "looking forward to working with the new Grand Admiral."

2. RECON WHAT?
The Recon Office, dummy! RO/AD Keiran Idanian has been setting about working to get the EH Reconnaissance Office back on its feet, and is looking to re-establish a member list for the short-lived Imperial Survey Corps which was started by the previous RO, Admiral Slage. Any officers who had signed up for the original ISC are being encouraged to get in contact with keiranidanian@aol.com and fire off an e-mail with the subject "ISC Member", in order to get involved with the revived project again.

3. WEEKLY NEWS ITEM OF THE WEEK THAT'S COMPLETELY INCONSEQUENTIAL AND UNIMPORTANT BUT IT HELPS FILL UP A REPORT
IWATS launches a refreshed Rebellion Tactics course. Nobody particularly cares, even those who bought the game.

4. NEW FAN FLICK
TheForce.net (TFN) has released another Star Wars fan film, called "Brains and Steel". It's supposedly based on a fight scene in the film "The Princess Bride". However, that means absolutely nothing to me, because I've never seen the film before, nor heard of it. And I can't spare the bandwidth to download 58 MB of fan film either, especially considering that nearly all such productions are inevitably god-awful, perhaps with the sole exception of "Troops" by Kevin Rubio. Bah.

5. TOKEN RECON OFFICE NEWS ITEM OF THE WEEK TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE WE ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THEM
Pft, RO web hunt.

WING NEWS
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1. WOOHOO
After over a month of bitter fighting and hard work, Operation Cantina Run III came to a close today, as Admiral Jarak Maldon prepared to announce the third Battlegroups Flagship with the final results from the third phase, centred around flying. Initial reports from the office of the Battlegroup Commander indicated that the ISD Relentless had been able to follow up on their massive success in the first two phases with 100% participation, with yet another round of full participation from the crew, clinching them the Flagship title for the first time in four years, since the ship held the flag of Battlegroup II, prior to the reform of the TIE Corps by then-Admiral Kawolski. While this has yet to be officially confirmed, preparations are already underway for celebrations aboard the ISD Relentless, with additional alcohol supplies being shipped in from the SSSD Sovereign. COM/VA Andronicus was reported to have locked himself in his office, spouting gibberish. CMDR/MAJ Dan Malaktos has said he is already preparing his pants for the arrival of the BG flag.

2. ANDY RETURNS
Beloved Commodore, Noble Leader of the Relentless, Defender of the Faith and High Priest of the Church of Wing IX Vice Admiral Talin Andronicus returned from emergency leave this week, after suffering computer difficulties. From Andy himself: "Yes, your ever-lovable COM got his PC back today (with a new PSU sporting quite a loud cooling fan, and the COM and LPT ports fixed - I can use the mouse on the 'net now and my printer will work agan - yay!), which means that once again the Flying Scotsman, umm, flies again. Yay!" Sword Squadron has been assigned the unenviable task of clearing up the used kleenex tissues which WC/GN Ricaud left scattered around the Commodore's office during Andronicus' absence.

3. GROOVY
As many of you might well have noticed, the Relentless has re-established a web presence with http://www.fightingninth.org (well, that's the easy URL to remember), our new kick-ass domain, thanks to the hard work of AD Quake/CPT Quintus of Spear Squadron (round of applause!) There are too many funky features on the web site to mention, but foremost is the fact that the Forums on the new site replace the old Relentless message boards. You can find them at http://relentless.emperorshammer.ca/forum.php ... there is one up for each squadron. Post away!

4. E-MAILS
In addition the registration of the new www.fightingninth.org domain for the ISD Relentless, there have also been created a number of forwarding addresses, which are easy to remember so that if anybody wants to e-mail any of the commanding officers aboard the ship, but can't remember the exact e-mail address of the individual, they can do so through a @fightingninth.org addy, which forwards the e-mail on to the appropriate officer. The addresses are as follows:

com@fightingninth.org - ISD Relentless Commodore (Vice-Adm. Andronicus)
wc@fightingninth.org - Wing IX Commander (Gen. Ricaud)
sword@fightingninth.org - Sword Squadron Commander (Maj. Ted)
dagger@fightingninth.org - Dagger Squadron Commander (Maj. Dan Malaktos)
spear@fightingninth.org - Spear Squadron Commander (Cdr. Krax Tarnisar)
hammer@fightingninth.org - Hammer Squadron Commander (Maj. Lohr Zadash)
shield@fightingninth.org - Shield Squadron Commander (Cdr. Da'emon Narshay)

In addition to these, anybody else who wants a @fightingninth.org forwarding address may request one. Just send me an e-mail and state what you want your @fightingninth.org address to be, and I'll put it up for you. This is, of course, limited only to crew members of the ISD Relentless. :-)

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

LEG SPREADER
Ingredients:
1 oz Tequila
1 oz Vodka
1 oz Gin
1 oz Rum
Mixing instructions:
Mix in glass and enjoy.

THE WING IX MORALE OFFICE
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A Rant From the Desk of General Steve the Cricket Bat ...

Okay, it probably hasn't passed by you that there's recently (as in, the past couple of years) been a lot of fuss about going to Mars, and NASA is paving the way for human exploration by sending lots of little robots to the planet's surface. The last one of these was an automated "rover" chugging about on the surface of Mars. It was a bit on the c**p side, seeing as it could only manage about a centimetre per minute, but the NASA scientists were nevertheless overjoyed. And good for them. Hip, hip, hooray. And they're sending another one there.

But I know something they don't, and I'm about to share it with you.

Let me take you back about two years. I was round a chum's place, who we'll call "Bob". We were in his study and he was tapping away on his PC keyboard, putting the finishing touches to a program he'd written. It looked pretty complicated, and he asked me to keep quiet while he finished it up. Naturally, I acquiesced, staring in fascination at the monitor as Bob typed in bunches of zeroes and ones. Blimey - he was writing pure machine code. I knew this program was something he'd brought back from work, and that it was meant to be a bit "secret", so I sat in silence, quite impressed, for about 15 minutes.
"There we go," said Bob suddenly, clicking the Enter key and leaning back on his chair, stretching his arms.
"You've finished then?" I said.
"Yup," he said. "I'll just go and have a crap and then we can load up Civilisation II."
With this he left the room. He also left his program on screen.
"Don't touch it, don't touch it," I was telling myself.
But of course I did touch it. I began by simply scrolling through the thing, and soon discovered the basic format of his program, which was PROC-THIS followed by a zillion ones and zeroes, then PROC-THAT followed by another zillion ones and zeroes, and so on and on. I assumed the prefix PROC stood for PROCEDURE, and that the suffix - whether it be, THIS, THAT, or THE OTHER - was the actual name of the procedure.
A series of loud, raspy farting noises echoed from the direction of Bob's toilet. It sounded like he wwas going to be quite a while. Great.

2001. Later this year, the Mars Surveyor mission will land another rover on the surface of the planet, in addition to the Mars Orbiter. Currently it's AOK. Except it isn't. It's actually booby-trapped. Bob's complicated program, as I discovered later, was for NASA, and is now etched in ROM on silicon chips ... both in the main Martian lander and the little rover vehicle. I wonder what'll happen when either the mother vehicle or the rover try to access PROC-BURL? Now I can't even begin to imagine what PROC-BURL is meant to do, but I do know I deleted a whole line of zeroes from the first line and added 38 ones at the end. That's sure to put the cat among the pigeons. And as for PROC-SELFRIGHT ... it's going to be a bit f****d if it does fall over, because I inserted the number "9" right slap bang in the middle of the code. Ho ho.

POSTINGS & PROMOTIONS
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FM/LT Bryan from Shield Squadron 3-2 to Shield Squadron 2-1 W.E.F. 28.03.01
TRN/CT Hermann from PLT Daedalus to Hammer Squadron 3-2 W.E.F. 28.03.01
RSV/LT Scott McCarty from Reserves to Shield Squadron 3-2 W.E.F. 29.03.01
FM/LT Pirat from Spear Squadron 1-2 to Reserves W.E.F. 29.03.01
SL Hermann to Lieutenant W.E.F. 29.03.01
RSV/RA Miackus from Reserves to Spear Squadron 3-2 W.E.F. 01.04.01
RA Miackus to Colonel (Authority) W.E.F. 01.04.01

AWARDS
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FM/CM Ric Gravin - Medal of Instruction - from FO/AD Priyum Patel for assisting training of SL Slayer

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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"danb ut u gace seeb wuyseri"
- Vice Admiral Ramos, as coherent as ever

In the Service of the Empire,

General Val Ricaud
WC/GN Ricaud/Wing IX/ISD Relentless
IC/GSx2/SS/BSx5/PCx5/ISMx8/MoT-1gh/LoC-PSx69/DFCx2/MoC/LoA/CoL/OV-3E [CAVL] {IWATS-M/1-SM/1}