Honorverse favorite one-liners

Cthia:
Now I was never in the military but I'm a military brat and many of my brothers and sisters were. And they all love the stuff. Black. Hot. Strong. No sugar. Bleh!

My father's mornings: Beetle Bailey and coffee.
I think this is what began my allowance. My father made a deal with me to collect the morning paper, from wherever off-mark target it landed from the paper boy, open it to Beetle Bailey and have his favorite coffee cup ready.

I think the military included a mainlined shot of coffee along with regular vaccinations and booster shots.

Oh come on, you just know one of 'em is just pure coffee!
To begin the addiction.

MaxxQ:
I guess that makes me really rare - I was in the Air Force. Couldn't stand coffee before I went in, and came out still hating the stuff. Nary a drop passed my lips.

Oddly enough, when it was my turn to run the squadron snack bar, my coffee got quite a bit of praise. Don't know what I was doing different - I just followed the instructions on the can and kept the coffee maker and pots clean.

Maxx, personally from what I've seen. I don't know how one can mess up a pot of coffee. Whatever the concoction, someone will like it.

My question though, in a military where coffee is like softdrinks, did you constantly get ragged on about your lack of the acquired taste like Honor? You must have stood out like a sore thumb.

MaxxQ wrote:I guess that makes me really rare - I was in the Air Force. Couldn't stand coffee before I went in, and came out still hating the stuff. Nary a drop passed my lips.

Oddly enough, when it was my turn to run the squadron snack bar, my coffee got quite a bit of praise. Don't know what I was doing different - I just followed the instructions on the can and kept the coffee maker and pots clean.

Maybe it was that without the caffeine withdrawal, from coffee addiction, you were actually awake enough to read and follow the instructions? Or to remember to clean the pot first?

I have seen messed up coffee in the Navy. I have NO clue how the cooks did it mind you, but everyone who had it that morning ending up tossing there cups after one sip. Even the Chief's.

Amaroq wrote:

cthia wrote: This all makes me wonder about the maximum distance of treecat mind glows. Does anyone know whether the distance limitation has been definitively given?

Something like it has been stated in A Beautiful Friendship, the expanded short story/first Stephanie Harrington novel. The main antagonist is trying to determine what the maximum range is that the treecat can sense him (e.g. the mind-glow's reach).

Which was how he knew he'd been precisely one hundred and fourteen meters from the restaurant when Lionheart suddenly stopped chewing his celery and turned to stare in the very direction from which Bolgeo was approaching.

Also:

So, he thought now, tipping back in his chair and clasping his hands on the back of his head as he gazed up at the ceiling, the little critter picked me up at just over a hundred meters. And he tracked me outbound to just over a hundred meters. So I think we can probably take his . . ."empathic detection range," for want of a better term, as a hundred meters. Of course, that's here in town. Twin Forks may be a podunk little burg, but there's probably enough people around to produce a lot of . . . background noise.

He frowned thoughtfully. There was no way to know just how distracting an empath might find the emotions of others. Would it be like trying to listen for a single voice in a roomful of talking people? Or could the treecats block out emotions they didn't want to hear? Could they listen for a single emotional . . fingerprint, call it, without being distracted by the other humans in the area?

Best to assume his range is knocked back if there are a lot of other people in the vicinity, Bolgeo decided. It'll be a lot smarter to operate on the assumption that he can "hear" me--or someone else--from a lot farther away out in the woods. On the other hand, let's not get too carried away with allowing for that. So if he could pick me up at a hundred meters here in town, let's assume he could pick me up at . . .oh, two hundred meters in the bush.

Is this what you were asking?

Tremendous! I am looking forward to that read even more now. You obviously took a course from Shannon "Oops" Foraker's school of tac-witchiness.

Thanks. My niece kept asking me to post that question.

cthia wrote:Maxx, personally from what I've seen. I don't know how one can mess up a pot of coffee. Whatever the concoction, someone will like it.

When my week at the snack bar was over, people were arguing to keep me back there. AFAIK, no one had ever done that with anyone else before.

cthia wrote:My question though, in a military where coffee is like softdrinks, did you constantly get ragged on about your lack of the acquired taste like Honor? You must have stood out like a sore thumb.

Yeah, I caught some friendly flak once in awhile. I was, and still am, a soda addict. That's another thing - me calling it "soda". I'm from Ohio, born and raised, and until I joined the AF, it was "pop". However, once I got to my first duty assignment in England, I got teamed up with a couple of guys from New York, where it's called "soda". Spent three years working with them, and picked up the phrase. After I left England and got to New Mexico, I just kept calling it soda.

Now that I'm back in Ohio, I still call it soda, and when my kids try to correct me and say it's "pop", I tell them, "Pop is what you hear when you pull your head out of your ass. It's soda."

On top of that, I say it with a Canadian accent, so the long "o" sound is a bit different from my normal US midwest "newscaster" accent. Reason is that my team leader in England was from upstate New York, and worked in Canada for a few years before he went military.

Jonathan_S wrote:Maybe it was that without the caffeine withdrawal, from coffee addiction, you were actually awake enough to read and follow the instructions? Or to remember to clean the pot first?

I wouldn't say it was from lack of caffeine withdrawal - after all, I got my caff from soda, and even now, if I don't have at least 2 sodas a day (12-ounce cans), I get headaches.

As for cleaning the pot, yeah... that was probably the biggest thing. I actually cleaned them in between refills. I got that from working at a fast food place before I joined the AF. We *had* to clean the pots between ever refill. So, I guess it was more habit than anything else.

MaxxQ,
Believe it or not, it was actually called 'soda pop' very early on.
http://youtu.be/SG6bFhwFKvU

Haven't been keeping up (between refereeing Youth soccer, keeping up with COSMOS, and work (whatever that is), but here's one from Cauldron of Ghosts that gives nothing away about the story (so no spoiler) but I just liked the wording:

Such as a shipboard computer whose capabilities vastly exceeded anything a pleasure yacht required. Centillions trembled at its approach; vigintillions just fell over dead.

-Regarding the computing power available to one Anton Zilwicki. (And yes, those are valid numbers--see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

A little gift for rose:

She'd discovered long since that people who looked like warriors too often proved to be Elvis Santinos or Pavel Youngs, while the most outwardly unprepossessing people frequently turned out to have nerves of steel.

Michelle musing about Admiral Khumalo in SFtS.

cthia wrote:
Tremendous! I am looking forward to that read even more now. You obviously took a course from Shannon "Oops" Foraker's school of tac-witchiness.

Thanks. My niece kept asking me to post that question.

No problem. I have a pretty good memory for these types of things and that coupled with me being a huge re-reader lets me zero in on questions like this somewhat easily.

cthia wrote:MaxxQ,
Believe it or not, it was actually called 'soda pop' very early on.
http://youtu.be/SG6bFhwFKvU

Yep. I knew that. People who call it that nowadays are schizophrenic - they can't decide one way or the other.

Because I don't have much money, what I drink is generic, store brand "cherry cola". When I *do* drink name-brand, it's almost always Cherry Pepsi. Back when I used to eat out (too expensive, now), I would always order a Cherry Coke - the real kind: Coke with grenadine.

Seeing a pattern here?