2011 Military Pay Raise: House, 1.9% vs. Senate, 1.4%?

[Updated 1/1/2011]
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 was passed by Congress and has been sent to the President for signature. Touted as the largest Defense budget since WWII, the bill authorizes $725 billion for fiscal year 2011. The bill covers virtually every aspect of military spending including authorization for expanding TRICARE coverage to include dependents up to age 26, TRICARE fee protection, family support and care giver programs and a 1.4 percent increase in military pay. 

Find the pay chart HERE

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 [prior]
For my fellow military members- here is the pending, unofficially proposed increases for next year, the great battle between the House and the Senate for the 2011 military pay increase.

Here's a excerpt from a reliable source on the recent conundrum:
AirForceTimes.com

"The House of Representatives wants a 1.9 percent military raise for 2011, an amount that would shave another half a percentage point off a perceived gap between average military and private-sector wages by providing an across-the-board increase higher than the average civilian wage hike last year.

The Senate, however, is siding with the Obama administration by putting a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in its version of the 2011 defense authorization bill passed May 27 by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

...Differences in the House and Senate bills must be reconciled before a final bill passes. The Obama administration has made clear that it sides with the Senate, although it is unclear how hard it would fight for a smaller raise."

There is a longer-termed benefit to the proposal by the Senate, that will have far reaching benefits to certain military members beyond the next fiscal year.

In addition to their chosen 1.4 percent increase (which they believe to be quite fair due to a number of other military pay/benefits having healthy increases), and by the urging of Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., chairman of that committee’s personnel panel, the Senate bill takes the first steps toward establishing a new formula for military pay raises that, beginning in 2012, would provide bigger increases to ground combat troops.

“There is no civilian equivalent for a grunt,” Webb said. “We need to have a new formula that recognizes that.”

Here is an excerpt from the latest news regarding this story @ USA Today:

"The House approved a 1.9% raise, but the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., adopted the administration's lower recommendation.
Two weeks remain in the "lame duck" session of Congress, and Democrats have made passage of a defense authorization bill, which includes the pay raise, contingent on a divisive measure to repeal the military's ban on gays serving openly.
Some senators say Congress should give a boost to troops doing the most fighting. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., will propose bonuses for troops doing the "hardest work and most hazardous duties," spokesman Will Jenkins says.
Retired vice admiral Norbert Ryan, president of the Military Officers Association of America, says his group is leading a coalition of 32 groups representing 5.5 million current and former military personnel and their families in pushing for a 1.9% raise."

I think we'll soon be seeing a LOT more of these pop up in the sandbox!

Red Dead Redemption - for PC fans?

The trend continues...seeing now that the average age of video gamers is 35 years old (which has risen from last few years) we now see a correlation of the console market gaining massive share of the sales of games, with a relatively small percentage of us PC gamers still holding sway.  Is it that perhaps the older gamers get, the more lazy and couch-bound we become? I'm 33, yet I still haven't sprung for the ps3 or it's 60 dollar games. I'm a PC gamer, going on at least 20 years now, and i've had playstations and nintendos (where my age group started of course!), but the games on consoles IMO serve a purpose, but don't satisfy like the PC counterparts. This is immensely arguable, of course, and fiercely debated in countless forums and internet discussions.

Now, more and more of our favorite games are developed for the money making console market FIRST, then...maybe, if we are lucky, the dev/publishers might throw us a bone and port their masterpiece's of simplistic gameplay and limited depth to the PC, where invariably the result is a buggy, un-optimized mess of a game [looking at you GUN] that is basically abandoned shortly after release and rarely polished with patches. There's apparently just no money to motivate them anymore.

Now ordinarily, this never bothered me too much. After all, like I said, console games are usually simplistic quick casual games or action games that are high on explosions and mind-numbing time wasters, fun because you don't have to 'think' too much and therefore, yes, are fun in a casual sit-on-the-couch-after-the-kids-go-to-bed mode. But now there is a crossing over, a turning point, where once in-depth, strategic, or franchised FPS games are being stolen from the PC, published on console first...and worse, ONLY on console, leaving us longtime fans of a certain franchise scratching our heads, with money in hand, wondering why we don't get to share in the fun anymore. Yeah! There I said it!  Listen up EA, 2K games, UBISOFT! Even one of my favorite developers, Bethesda (Morrowind, Oblivion) spent their money on optimizing Oblivion and Fallout 3 for the @%$! [parden me, consolers] Xbox/Ps3 crowd first, then ported it over to the PC-where these games roots began. With InfinityWard/Activision's bastardization of the infamous Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the trend continues as the money rolls in.

So now we come to one of my other favorite developers, Rockstar, whom have a mostly outstanding track record of high-quality, highly addicting and fun games, releasing what appears to be a stellar new game -Red Dead Redemption, only on the consoles. Yes, I realize that the first in the series '..Revolver' was also a console-only game- that game was mostly a fun 2 player shoot-em up without a major story or single player story campaign. The sequel looks vastly superior, complete with hollywood quality writing, graphics, story and cut-scenes [a la GTA series], and therefore...I really want a chance to place this bad boy. Will I get the chance? Only time will tell.

Rockstar took a year to release GTA4 to PC, almost as long for Vice City and San Andreas. Currently, what Rockstar San Diego is reporting is they have no plans to release Red Dead Redemption for PC, but if that changes they will 'let us know'.

So for you Xbox/Ps3 owners who may enjoy this game- go ahead and 'let me know' how it is. I'll go back to my port of the still excellent Fallout 3 GOTY edition in the meantime.

RollerCoaster Tycoon Movie on its way, Thanks Sony!

Ha Ha-this could be really great with a great script! Think: Bill Murray as the retired amusement park tycoon who’s spirits are down due to lack of interest and anything worthy to top his past creations. Enter- 3 kids and a dumbass parent (how bout Mr. Lumberg’s Gary Cole) to help spark his passion and resurrect an old abandoned amusement park on some coastal town. Shenanigans and site-gags ensue as Bill tries every wiley, low, and hilarious method to create rides that are barf-o-matically hilarious, every one worse than the last; and scrupulous sideshow contests and venders that attempt every dirty trick in the book to rob customer’s blind. +Plenty of 3-D CGI rides shots!!
It’s all in the script people!

I played the heck out of this game when I first began my PC-gaming roots. Glad to see all those 2-D pixels will be getting the HOLLYWOOD Treatment now! heh heh

Read a bit more at Wired HERE

Time to buy your new Home!

It is spring, the sun is peaking between the grey-blue clouds, and in-between sun showers, I feel it's brief warmth. I'm getting happy, and anxious, for we have finally decided to take the plunge and go for purchasing our first home.

It means a lot to us, both of our parents never purchased a home. My mother rented place to place since I could remember. I've probably lived in over 20 places growing up, and another 10 or so in the last decade, on my own, and with my family.  It has been an impossible dream since I was old enough to become bitter at moving so much. School to school, gaining a friend a year, losing them, starting over with a new one, losing them. People treat you like a temporary fixture in their classroom, other kids react to you like you just stepped off the plank from mars, either ignoring you, antagonizing you, or worse. All because you didn't have a nice big house to live in, for more than 2 years. Kids are cruel, and so is the credit building process, come to find out.

Both my wife and I have been unofficially 'building' a foundation for owning a home at least the last few years, but  with the recent perfect storm of low interest rates, plenty of available housing, and my unused VA loan collecting dust, it was time to get serious. Credit repair is a aggravating and counter-intuitive process. Literally, the more you read the FICO website forums, the better off you are, if you have any intention of keeping track of your credit, and/or plan on any major purchases. Start EARLY, building credit; and start saving for the myriad fees involved in closing costs, inspections, downpayments etc. That, and with a little good luck, and a fabulous friend/Realtor like my wife has, and you'll find your new home too.

I could write an entire post on what I have learned to do, and more importantly, what NOT to do, but that might put some of you to sleep. I would highly recommend visiting that forum for further help. It's free, and it is written by people like you and me of their trials, tribulations, victories and journeys to better credit. FICO Forum HERE. 

Fast forward through the last few months, and this weekend we are going to meet with the builders/sellers of our future home to sign papers. The process isn't over yet, closing won't come until the house is built in 4-5 months, but we will have fun in the interim with choosing colors, wood-types, appliances and the like.

It is all very surreal, coming this far to have a big beautiful home customized by us to call home. It's going to be a busy summer.

Here's a picture of the identical model of the home we are having built, for anyone curious!  Isn't it beautiful??!!

Dragon Age: Origins - Where has all the A.I. in PC Games gone?

I finally started my character in Dragon Age: Origins and I have to say I haven't played a game whose story has so quickly sucked me in for a long while...perhaps even since the original Sierra's Homeworld.

Within an hour of playing, I had to make a crucial decision between loyalty to a friend in need, or my duty toward my Elf Mage's 'Headmaster'... twists and turns are already abound, and I truly feel like I am changing the script of the game on the fly, with every decision [one of 5 if I remember] that I choose during conversations in the well-done cinematic moments. While all this is great, and the game itself is very polished and beautiful, (and I am picky) I am missing the elements of deciding strategy in the combat portion of the game. Being not an expert at all of the D&D affiliated Neverwinter Nights/Baldur’s Gate vein, I am guessing that the 'rule book' that seems to be equally a part of this style of play/franchise is the reason.

Yes, you can select when to use that heal, when to use that type of magic, when to use your sacred whatchamacallit at the crucial time…it is still formulaic and ultimately, the odds are still based on mathematical calculations. Up until the recent excellent (and personal fav) Left4dead series by Valve, I’ve seen little evolvement or incorporation of any meaningful A.I. into a PC game as of late. For those that haven’t played those games, the A.I., [Valve call’s the “Director”] constantly monitors many aspects of the in-game human players actions, skill and whereabouts to adjust the gameplay on the fly. This creates a more dynamic, unpredictable, and engaging solution to the game that might otherwise bore players after multiple play-through’s of the same levels.

 

Nothing whatsoever against Dragon Age in of itself -I'm just going to rant about the 'random-stat' result in games in general. Nothing is worse than when I feel like any strategy that I am learning, or have gained in all my warmongering years on the pc, is completely undermined by a simple, mathematical formula of odds. It changes from an actual strategic decision, to something akin to a digital slot machine.

Quick thought- remember Black & White (1&2)? I couldn’t WAIT to play that game, and found it mostly to my expectations. Randomness worked in that one, in the form of an elegantly complex A.I. that would allow your creature some truly surprising, interesting and sometimes hilarious results. I remember the devs stating how their creature A.I. behavior had actually surprised them with actions they never expected! That was totally groundbreaking territory, and I wish we got more of that in pc games.

All too often, games are released with simple paper-rock-scissor type logic. While some are still extremely fun to play (another favorite-Company of Heroes comes to mind), these are among hundreds I have learned ‘how’ to play. Usually this is against real logic, which is fine when in a fantasy environment, but I feel even these style of games could benefit from allowing the player to use real strategy and logic to out-smart the enemy, not merely play by a very finite limit of game ‘A.I.’

Doesn't matter that I outflanked those troops with the appropriate weapons, setup defenses that prevented that spy from taking out that town [EMPIRE I’m lookin’ at you], ESPECIALLY with most games ‘diplomacy’ options…once you press the conflict button, it’s still a crap-shoot. This is why I am in endless search for a game that allows true freedom to discover, and use your own brain's strategy. Those lend the best reward and enjoyment I have found…

I'm not saying EVERY game needs to have a mandatory awesome A.I. code injected -Despite these wants, I will play Dragon Age feverishly, to simply see the story unfold, for despite any [or lack thereof] dynamic A.I. incorporated, it is still a fun-as-hell and intriguing game in its own right.