vol. 17 no. 3 - May 2001
The U.S.S. Alaric is a North Carolina chapter of STARFLEET, the International Star Trek Fan Association. Starfleet and the Alaric recognize Paramount's sole ownership of all Star Trek copyrights. Annual individual member dues to the international club are $15.00 per year.
U.S.S. AlaricHow To Join: U.S.S. Alaric
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Carolina Communicator
Carolina Communicator (c) 2001 by USS Alaric. Promotional materials copyrighted by Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, and other companies, and selected submissions copyrighted by individual contributors. NEWSLETTER EDITOR: Ian "Krell" Johnsson Next Issue Deadline: Submission Guidelines: Please follow these guidelines:
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The views expressed in the Carolina Communicator do not necessarily reflect those of the staff, or all of the members of the Alaric. |
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Alaric
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ELECTED OFFICERS:
President (Captain) - Richard Heim |
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FCapt. Richard Heim |
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Welcome to the 0105 issue of the Carolina Communicator! Once again, I'd like to thank our editor, Ian Johnsson, for taking on the task of compiling and creating this masterpiece you hold on your screen! I'd also like to thank our CompOps chief, Ensign Robert Saucier, for the excellent work he has done revamping our club web page! Thank you also to those members who responded to my call to help update the various pages' content. Almost everything is up-to-date now on our backup site (http://www.ussalaric.org/). Our primary club web site (http://home.sprynet.com/~ian/alaric/alaric.htm) is in the process of being updated. I've been spending a lot more time in Sick Bay the last few weeks than I've wanted, sent there several times by agonizing pains in my stomach. Starfleet Intelligence has ruled out poisoning by the remnants of Latinumfinger's organization, which we destroyed last year (see the May and July issues of the CC). Both our CMO, RAdm. Bolick, and our EMH concur that it is not an Alien egg gestating in my stomach (I'm relieved to hear that!). All that they will tell me is that I'm in for some more tests and medical tricorder examinations. I'd like to remind everyone of the special club activities. These include collecting Campbells product labels in support of Eliada Children's Home, and aluminum can recycling as a club fund raiser. Our XO, Dale Anderson, is heading up our participation in the Vessel Readiness Certification Program. I call upon the Alaric crew to please support these acitivities. At our 0103.10 meeting, I awarded Alaric Commendations to two members:
A special aluminum can crushing party was held at the Captain's quarters on March 24. Our April meeting was held on the third Saturday (0104.21) instead of the second Saturday due to the Library being closed for Easter. This meeting saw an Alaric "first": the CO dressed in a costume (I came as a Jedi Knight, and if you don't know the significance of that, well, it's a loooong story!). In addition to officer reports and our regular doorprize drawings, we discussed the upcoming Region One Summits (both this year's in Greensboro and next years's which will be held in April at Pigeon Forge, TN), the International Space Station exhibit coming to Charlotte's Discovery Place (see my CSO report elsewhere this issue for details), and this year's Alaric officer elections. Our fun activities this month were a Star Trek trivia quiz and watching the movie, Trekkies. This year we will be holding our biennial elections. The Alaric Constitution states that the incumbent officers are automatically candidates to their office unless they decide not to run for re-election. Both the CO and XO are running for re-election (I'm running for CO, and Dale is running for XO). We don't currently have a Second Officer (Executive Secretary), but I'd like to see someone run for this office. CO, XO, and SO candidates must be OTS and OCC qualified, be active Alaric members who have been members for at least two years, and be at least 18 years old. Candidates must be nominated for an office by a member, with the nomination seconded by another member. Nominations must be made at least two months prior to the election, which means the deadline will be the July meeting. The election itself will be held by secret ballot at the September meeting, with mail balloting allowed. If there is more than one candidate for an office, then the candidate with the majority of votes cast is elected. If there is only one candidate for an office, then the vote will be a confidence vote for that candidate. I'm asking for your vote. Please re-elect me as your Commanding Officer! Thank you very much. That's all for this report. Live Long, and Prosper! FCapt. Richard Heim Click Here to Return to Table of Contents
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LT. Dale Anderson |
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I'm glad to be back to my duties, recovering from my brief stay in sick bay. I'd like to thank Richard and all those who assisted him in two matters. First for all the Campbell's Soup labels. I have enough to make a nice submission to the Eliada Home for Children in show of our support to their effort to get educational equipment and supplies. Secondly, I'd like to thank all those who cooperated with Richard to submit more SFA diplomas for the VRCP. I conject that we can have at least one more department we can certify. I'll keep all of you posted on my progress. Click Here to Return to Table of Contents
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Alaric Department Reports |
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DEPARTMENT HEADS:
Chief Science Officer - Richard Heim |
| Chief Science Officer | FCapt. Richard Heim |
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In the last two months, the Alaric has sent away teams to two really great conventions! Both were in Atlanta, GA. The first one was MOC-16 on March 16-17 and this was a party convention. The second one was Fantasm 2001 on April 12-15 and this was an erotic fantasy convention. Did I say both were really great?! I especially enjoyed Fantasm! Hopefully, by next issue I'll have some web page reports online with pictures. In June, The Discovery Place in Charlotte, NC will be hosting International Space Station: The Earth Tour. This sounds like a wonderful exhibit to see! It is described at the ISS web page, http://www.air-space.com/iss.htm, and Discovery Place details can be found at http://24.93.68.194/. The Alaric will be sending an away team, and we're planning it to be a multi-ship adventure! Next weekend (as I write this, anyway, it'll be April 27-29), the Region One Summit will be held in Greensboro, NC. The Alaric will be represented there, as well as Region One Sciences. Greensboro is home to the Natural Science Center, which will be the focus of my science facility discussion in this issue of the Carolina Communicator. The Natural Science Center is located at 4301 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro, NC 27455. Their telephone number is (336) 288-3769, fax number is (336) 288-0545, and email address is nscg@greensboro.com. According to their web page (http://www.greensboro.com/sciencecenter/information.htm), the Natural Science Center is a "hands-on museum, zoo, and planetarium offering fun for the whole family." They have a Gem and Mineral Gallery and a 36-foot Tyrannosaurus rex model in the Dinosaur Gallery, you can pet animals in the zoo's petting area, and Kids Alley has exciting traveling exhibits you can interact with. In addition to the Edward R. Zane Planetarium, they have a solar observatory with views of the sun. You can "step into a computer and experience virtual reality," or "find unusual gifs and educational toys for imaginative minds in the Thesaurus Shoppe." I hope to have time during the Summit for an away team to the Natural Science Center. http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/AlaricSci.htm
FCapt. Richard Heim RDC REGION ONE SCIENCES NEWS Region One Sciences currently does not have an Assistant RDC or a newsletter editor. The second position is especially important, as an editor is desperately needed to get the Region One Sciences newsletter webzine back online. I did not receive any applicants the first go-around, so I'll be announcing a second round seeking applicants soon. The latest issue of the Region One Sciences newsletter that has been published is the June/Sept 2000 issue (http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/nl/r1sci00060009.htm). I'll be leading a Region One Sciences discussion at the Region One Summit April 28. We'll have lots to discuss, including science-related activities and lists, science education, opportunities and reporting requirements for ship Chief Science Officers, and the Sciences Awards Program. In March, Rick Driver resigned as FDC Science. However, the internet list servers dealing with science are still active. If you'd like to keep up with developments in science and visit fascinating web pages, subscribe to the Science-Lab list or the SFI-FDC-Science list. Go to the egroups (yahoo groups) web page http://groups.yahoo.com/ Under the "Join a Group" section, type in the name of the group to join and click on "Search". The names of the two groups are: Science-Lab and SFI-FDC-Science. You'll want to join the first Science-Lab group listed. There will be only one SFI-FDC-Science group listed at the bottom. Check out the Region One Sciences web page: http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/R1Science.htm
FCapt. Richard Heim
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| Chief Engineer | Cmdr. Sheila Hand |
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I would like all of you to know the Chief Engineer is still
alive and well, in spite of not getting newsletter articles done
lately. I have been rather busy in real life, so unfortunately
STARFLEET duties were put on hold. After being reprimanded by the
Captain I have attempted to get back on track on writing articles.
Following is an explanation of why I have been so busy, lately. 1) In November of 2000, I once again changed jobs. I am now working at CII. As of January 2001, my temporary period of employment was over, and I was hired in as a permanent employee. As all of you know, this involves a lot of paperwork, and information being given to you at once. In addition, it involves adjusting to a new group of coworkers, and on the job training. This took up some time. 2) Also, at the close of last year, I began Martial Arts training. I am going to Tae Kwon Do classes two to three times a week now. I have also taken and passed two belt tests. The first five belts at our school are as follows: 1) White; 2) Yellow; 3) Orange; 4) Green; and 5) Blue. After Blue, are several more levels before Black. I am currently at Orange Belt level, working toward Green. As you can imagine this also takes up some time. 3) On New Year's Eve/Day, my aunt and uncle's house burned down. Therefore, we have also been helping them to get cleaned up, collect essentials, and get settled back in a temporary trailer next to the burned house. Last week, they moved into the temporary trailer. They are currently making plans for a new house to be built there, after clean up is complete. Due to this we (my husband and I) have been looking at moving into our own place rather than the rented trailer we are in now. We have been shopping for manufactured/modular homes, and working on getting some land from our family. Don't worry though, we are not planning to leave this area (WNC) just move out of the city. We have also been packing up some of our more important stuff as we make a home inventory of it, and moving it to an off-site storage unit to prevent losing everything as my aunt and uncle did. We are also planning to get a fire-proof box, or rent a safety deposit box to store valuable papers in. I would suggest to anyone else to take similar steps to prevent total loss of property due to fire. 4) In March 2001, I became an Independent Distributor for a company called StoryTeller. This is similar to Avon in that you have home parties to sell the product. StoryTeller products are felt-story boards for children. The famous children's stories are printed on felt. The figures are then cut out and place on a felt background board as the story is told. The Startup Kit comes with several of these stories, and tips on how to set up your own business. I have been working on the set-up procedure, and trying to get people interested in Home Parties. This takes another chunk of time. 5) Fortunately, due to working on 1st shift, and exercising at Martial Arts training, I have been quite healthy. However, my husband has not been so lucky. For the past three weeks he has had a kidney stone. After several doctor visits, two emergency room trips, and a lot of waiting, the urologist decided to due surgery. He had surgery on Friday, April 20. He has of course been having a few problems since, and I have spent all weekend at home taking care of him. Therefore, I was unable to attend the April 21 meeting. However, it did allow me to catch up on e-mail and article writing. 6) Also at the beginning of April, I was promoted at work. I am now a Set-up Technician rather than an Assembler. Therefore, it is now my job to keep the machines on my line operating properly, and prevent problems from occurring with them. I am finally getting to do what I trained for at A-B Tech for so long, and I am loving every minute of my job. However, this involves re- adjusting to my job, and a lot of on-the-job training, learning, and challenges. In addition, I have to get used to working with a new group of coworkers, since I also changed lines. This can be as challenging as the job, but also fun. 7) Of course, I have also had to keep up with the standard stuff too: taxes (getting last year's and this year's corrected after mistakes); church activities, and meetings; personal banking, and business banking; family activities, etc. As you can tell it has been a busy four months, but everything is once again going well, and I hope to get caught up soon in STARFLEET. The Engineering Department itself is doing well, and we are still keeping the ship's engines up and running. We are ready for a busy spring/summer on the Alaric. Click Here to Return to Table of Contents
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| Chief, Computer Operations | Ensign Robert Saucier |
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Second time out of the gate and I'm running in dead last in getting information together for this month's CC. My wife and I are freshly returned from Kentucky and the excitement of the Kentucky Derby. We weren't there in person but there's something about just being in Kentucky when the Derby's run ... [Editor's Note: To quote Spock, "I believe he called it a mint julip..."] If you're interested in seeing some pictures from our visit, point your browser to http://www.saucier-pages.com/ky_spring_01 (if there's nothing there when you visit, come back in a few days). On to the good stuff ... --- On the checkup list in the last issue, I'd mentioned backups and virus protection. Another important issue is power -- the food for the giant hamster that lives in your computer. This hamster hates dirty food and REALLY hates it when he's force-fed a huge amount at once. If you leave your computer on for extended periods of time, a relatively inexpensive (<$100) add-on for your computer, an uninterruptible power supply or UPS (pronounced ... well, 'ups'), will keep the hamster happy. An UPS is a multi-function device:
Depending on how much money you're willing to sacrifice or what kind of deal you're able to find, you can get an UPS that will power your system anywhere from 3 minutes to hours if the power goes out. For example, my home system would require a 600 VA (Volt-Amp) rated UPS to provide 15 minutes of up-time during a power outage. This includes use of the monitor and peripherals such as a modem and scanner. You can find an interactive sizing application at American Power Conversion's web site or at Tripp Lite's site. Most UPS manufacturer's also provide software that can gracefully shut down your system when a power outage occurs. --- USS Alaric e-mail addresses are still available! Cost is $12 per year. This fee is the actual cost of the e-mail box itself. Your USS Alaric e-mail can be checked via the web or can be accessed through your favorite e-mail application. If you're interested, please contact me at CompOps@ussalaric.org. --- That's it for this time around. If there's a topic you'd like to read about, drop me a note at CompOps@ussalaric.org. I'll research it and spew the results out in a future CC. Click Here to Return to Table of Contents
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| Chief, Social Sciences | LT. Dale Anderson |
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In Trek World there are many planets that possess pre-warp
societies. In fact some worlds have not even experienced the
simplest technological revolutions. In a recent article I read, I
realized how different the universe or night skies might be
perceived by those societies. Take the ancient Mayan culture in
the western hemisphere of our own planet. The Milky Way was very much revered by the Maya. It was
symbolized as the World Tree, which was represented by a tall and
majestic Flowering Tree, the Ceiba. The Milky Way was also called
the Wakah Chan. Wak means "Six" or "Erect".
Chan or K'an means "Four", "Serpent" or
"Sky". The World Tree was erect when Sagittarius was
well over the horizon. At this time the Milky Way rose up from the
horizon and climbed overhead into the north. The star clouds that
form the. MiIky Way were seen as the Tree of Life where all Life
came from. Near Sagittarius, the center of our galaxy, where the
World Tree meets the Ecliptic was given special attention by the
Maya. A major element of the World Tree include the Kawak Monster,
a giant head with a kin in its forehead. This monster was also a
Mountain or wi fz Monster. A sacrificial bowl on its head contains
a flint blade representing sacrifice, and the Kimi glyph that
represents death. The Ecliptic is sometimes represented as a bar
crossing the major axis of the World Tree, making a form that is
similar to the Christian Cross. On top of the World Tree we find a
bird that has been called, the Principal Bird Deity, or Ifzam Ye.
There is also evidence that shows the Sun on the World Tree as it
appeared to the Maya at Winter Solstice. During the months of winter, when the so-called "Winter" Milky Way dominates the sky, it was called the "White Boned Serpent." This part of the Milky Way passed overhead at night during the dry season. If is not brilliant like the star clouds that dominate the sky North of the equator during the months of Summer, but observers of dark locations will easily see the glow. Here the Ecliptic crosses the Milky Way again, near the constellation of Gemini which was the approximate location of the Sun during Summer Solstice. It is possible that the jaws of the White -Boned Serpent were represented by the Kawak monster head. |
Ian "Krell" Johnsson
I have seen a number of good reviews on this game, which tells me one important fact: Activision is spending a lot of money on bribes in order to generate interest in this stunning dull, highly over-rated so-called game. On the surface it looks very good. The premise: You are a would-be entrepreneur, looking to corner the market in the highly competitive world of fast food. You have to build your new business from the ground up: negotiate with a bank to get a start-up loan; pick your location; rent the building; style it with an attractive decor; install ovens, freezers, etc.; plan your menu (BTW, although it's called 'Fast Food Tycoon', the only thing you can actually serve is pizza); hire your staff; buy advertising. You’re in control of each step of the process. Combine that with nice graphics that give you a very Sim-City-like feel, and you’d think you have everything you need for a really great game. That is until you actually sit down and play the game for a while. What’s so wrong with it? Well, let’s start at the beginning... There’s no printed game manual, and the built-in tutorial is woefully inadequate. Which means much of the learning process has to be done purely trial-and-error style. Next, once you’ve gone through the entire process of setting up your shop and you open your doors for business, you have to wait for the customers to come in. And I do mean wait. Customers stroll in and out throughout the day, but during slow periods there’s nothing for you to do but sit there and stare at the screen since there’s no way to speed up the game’s time rate. This is an especially big problem if you decide not to run your store 24 hours a day. If you close for the night, you have to sit there for roughly 8 hours of game time (about 5 to10 minutes real time) with nothing happening. Even worse, the game doesn’t actually allow you to set ‘open’ and ‘closed’ times for the store. If you want to be closed at night, you just don’t schedule any workers for that time period. But customers can still wander in; they’ll come in, sit down and wait to be served. Since nobody’s there to take their order they eventually leave with a sour opinion of your business. So like it or not you have to plan on staying open 24 hours a day. The extra cost of staff hours during this slow period makes it difficult to show a profit when you’re first starting out. Next let’s consider advertising. You can pick from a variety of options: flyers, mail inserts, newspaper ads, TV ads, etc. But before you can hire a company to create your ads you first have to hire another company to do market research. Very costly market research. Which again is hard to afford early on in the game. And guess what? That research you had done grows old quickly, so chances are next time you want to run another ad you have to have more research done. Up to this point, Tycoon is not that much different from many other real-life simulation games, like the popular Maxis Sim-City series. There’s a lot of things you have to take into account in order to eventually show a profit, and if that’s all there was I would like the game just fine. The problem is, there’s a whole different side to the game: the Underworld. That’s right, the world of the Fast Food Tycoon is heavily under the influence of organized crime. Your competitors can hire thugs to frighten your customers, bribe health inspectors to give you poor ratings, infest your store with roaches, or even plant spoiled cheese in the store room. To combat these threats, you have to become involved in the crime world yourself. Hire armed guards or thugs of your own to protect your store. Carry out sabotage against your competitors. Bribe the police and city officials to turn a blind eye to your underhanded deeds. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You could make an entire separate game just out of trying to become the Kingpin of the crime world, without having to also worry with the mundane aspects of running a small business. All of which makes the game needlessly complicated and, in my opinion, sucks all of the fun out of the game. Finally, while the game screens look good I found the control icons difficult to understand and extremely un-intuitive. The music, while cute in the beginning, gets rather annoying after an hour or two of game play. And I think over all that sums up this game pretty well. When you first start playing it’s cute and fun, but the more you play it the more you start to realize how poorly designed the whole thing is. About the only good thing to be said for it is that while good sim games generally cost in the $40 - $50 range, Fast Food Tycoon is only $15. And even that is too much as far as I’m concerned. KRELL'S "LATINUM RATING": 3 Bars (out of 10) COMMENTS: I was actually tempted to rate this game using slips or strips of latinum, not bars. It's too complex for kids; if you're not a simulation game fan you won't even find it remotely amusing; and if you are a sim fan, this game pales in comparison to Sim-City or any of the others in the genre. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: A 200 MHz PII processor; 32 MB RAM; 150 MB hard drive space; Windows 95/98. Manufactured by: Activision Click Here to Return to Table of Contents
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