Mountain Man, Machinist, Blacksmith, Gunsmith, Amateur Writer, and Old Going Blind Curmudgeon on the Internet.

Avid reader of Historical Fiction, Science Fiction.

Current pain in the Duckk's tail-feathers on David Weber's site forums, particularly 'Honorverse Humor or lack thereof,' as CPO Poker Mind and his sidekick Spacecat First Mangy Fur. Mangy Fur whose treecat name is Black Stone Biter was one of his clan's flint-nappers (stone biters) is studying to be a machinist (metal biter) in the RMN. His two-leg name comes from the fact that the Chief makes him clean the air ducts, and due to the heavy metal contamination of Grayson where they are stationed the Chief has to give him a bath. Pst- there is a reason the Manticorians have the saying 'mad as a wet treecat,' but when he comes out of the bath he looks like he has a terminal case of the mange. Oh, his nick-name is Mange. Mange loves shrimp and celery egg-rolls from the Chinaman's a restaurant on Grayson. Mange likes to drive the Chief nuts by playing some disks of Jakie Gleason and Art Carny The Honeymooners episodes over and over and over like a two leg youngling. Mange wants a hat like Ed Norton and notes the chief is like Ralph Cramden a fat blowhard who often puts his foot in his mouth.

The name Poker Mind comes from the fact the Chief can dampen his mind glow, thus have a poker mind to go with his poker face, and can thus successfully bluff treecats in poker, no mean feat. The Chief like Mangy Fur are both imaginary characters. The closest I got to the real Navy was NJROTC in high school, were I made MCPO, but my Chief, was a veteran of Pearl Harbor 12-7-1941 a hell of a chess player and sea story teller. I model CPO Poker Mind after CPO Cunningham a bit. Mange plays (although not very well) an electric lire while Chief Poker Mind sings (like a Missouri Canary, ugh mule y'all) Grayson classical music (Country and Western) for Ronchco Records on Grayson. Their biggest hit Mammas Don't Let Your Treekittens Grow Up To Be Space Cats. Ronchco is famous for it's Cat-O-Matic commercial where a treecat marine (silver claw) in treecat body armor with vibro blade claws turns a head of lettuce and a carrot into Cole-slaw to sell their food processor. When asked about Chief Poker Mind and Space Cat First Mangy Fur's lack of talent the president of Ronchco stated that a treecat on the box could sell air in the box.

Grayson Psalm of Honor by Poker Mind

Yea though I taketh a ride of death
I shall fear no evil
For Honor Harrington is with me
And she is the Best Damn Admiral in the Galaxy
But I'm wearing a red shirt! Testor, help me!!

I am currently working on a Honorverse fiction based on the following post on David Weber's site by The Monster in the SPOILER Treecats thread in the Honorverse forum as seen the orriginal idea of teaching 'cats base four is mine, but The Monster took it and ran with it much better than I did.

[quote="TheMonster"[quote="pokermind"]According to David Weber, treecats have difficulty with human mathematics. But I wounder if their main problem is they are using base 4 rather than base 10? Treecats number things in hands, their hands have four fingers, therefore base 4. IE 1=1, 2=2, 3=3, 10=4, 11=5, ... 100=16 or a hand of hands.

Computers use base 2, and base 4 is just a variant so I wounder if in time treecats will become ace computer geeks, hum?
[/quote]

The main problem 'cats have with mathematics is that it is another language humans use to express certain ideas. Because 'cats haven't historically used language to communicate, they also haven't learned that language is valuable for thinking about ideas, even when no communication is anticipated. So it's going to take a while for it to catch on.

Base 16 (hexadecimal) is widely used in computing as the human-readable representation of binary:
hex: Base 4 = 'cat hands
1: 1 = finger
2: 2 = two fingers
3: 3 = three fingers
4: 10 = hand
5: 11 = hand and finger
6: 12 = hand, two fingers
7: 13 = hand, three fingers
8: 20 = two hands
9: 21 = two hands, one finger
A: 22 = two hands, two fingers
B: 23 = two hands, three fingers
C: 30 = three hands
D: 31 = three hands, one finger
E: 32 = three hands, two fingers
F: 33 = three hands, three fingers
10: 100 = hand of hands
11: 101 = hand of hands, finger1F: 133 = hand of hands, three hands, three fingers40: 1000 = hand of hands of hands
FF: 3333 = three hands of hands of hands, three hands of hands, three hands, three fingers (255 in decimal)

Each pair of base-4 digits maps perfectly to a single base-16 digit. Modern computers use "bytes" of 8 bits, comprising two "nybbles" of 4 bits, each of which maps perfectly to a hex digit. Processors generally use 16, 32, or 64 bits for their registers, again mapping to 4, 8, or 16 hex digits. That last number is a hand-of-hands of digits, each of which counts to a hand of hands itself. Very 'cat friendly, indeed.

Once a 'cat is assigned to Sir Horace and learns to count in this new fashion, as well as some of his other skills, and reports back to a Memory Singer, there will be plenty of 1337 h@xx0r k@7z.[/quote]

I'm going on the Mathematics angle, but if some soul wants to use the character with the treecat name The Monster teaching the treecats to be computer geeks go for it, or as the Monster himself suggests pair a 'cat with Sir Horace.

PS here is some of The Monster's writing on Dave's site, well before a fat blow hard mentionned Fan-Fic was not allowed on David's Site he pulled the following, but it was so beautiful. Oh the fat blow-hard was me. :

Imagine Foraker and Hemphill showing off their new toy to Theisman and Springs From Above.

[quote]

[i]Springs From Above allowed Dreams of Peace to help him into this new metal skin. Before him was a boulder. Dreams of Peace spoke to him: [/i] "Reach out with your hand and scratch this rock with your claws." [i]It was a simple, if not silly, thing to do, and Springs from Above complied.[/i]

Inside the treecat skinsuit, his claws slowly extended from the fingers into special slits designed to keep the claws from compromising the skinsuit's ability to hold his skin together in vacuum, past sensors that measured their extension. But the millimeter Springs from Above extended his claws was amplified by those sensors; from the tip of the armor protecting each of his fingers came a centimeter of what he immediately recognized from the memory song as the knife wielded by Death Fang's Bane.

Springs From Above cautiously let his claws out another millimeter, and the blades extended an additional centimeter -- no, it was actually just a bit more than that. Each millimeter he extended his claws caused those blades to grow further. When his claws were at their maximum extension of a dozen millimeters, the blades were nearly a quarter meter in length... [i]... the blades were almost half as long as his own body, and they sliced through the boulder like his own claws would pass through a leaf. Springs from Above knew then that with six hands of these blades, he could kill an entire pack of Death Fangs. He longed to share this memory with a Singer, for he knew it would be sung to all the clans, and hands of hands of generations from now, it would still be sung.[/i]

[/quote]

...Or something like that[/quote]

Grayson Psalm Of Honor by Poker Mind

Yea though I taketh a ride of death
I shall fear no evil
For Honor Harrington is with me
And she is the Best Damn Admiral in the Galaxy
But I'm wearing a red shirt! Testor, help me!!

Had a comment from mbushroe on computer programing that I'll share

"Your profile makes a good read all by itself.

But in the tradition of reviews to help not hurt other writers, I would like to offer a few points. As a man of many, many distractions, I have also always been interested in and wishing to learn black smithing. Elbows are getting to creaky to really take it up now, but thats not important now. What is is that I have been a computer programmer for decades and have a little more insight, perhaps, into the kind of mind that works in that area. A hand of hands making 16 bits is great for bit bangers, but few still practice the old trade of programing individual bits. I do, because I enjoy the hardware side of controlling what those bits do, as well. When it comes to high level programming, it is those who can think naturally in an unnatural 'world' that can see how to string pieces together to do difficult things. I agree that any tree cat that bonded with Horace would likely have the same bent, literally, mindset. But I am not so sure about 4 claws being better than 5 fingers for most work.

Most people imagine good programmers as being very literal minded since computers choke on the most minor spelling or syntax errors. For me at least, it is just the opposite. I let the computer search every keystroke for th slightest confusion, and focus on imaging what the many parts do when they work. What I imagine instead is more like a tool maker learning to make new tools. If you make knife with a bent blade, it will not cut true. If you make a tool with a wobbly handle, it will hurt the user more than anything else. But if you can imagine how to make a blade bent just so, with a handle the shifted and rotated only so much, it could become the perfect too to cut the poisonous hard seeds out of a prized fruit. In the same way, imagining new ways to string existing pieces together, or new pieces to do what know one had though of before, translated by an enhanced computer interface, I could easily see allowing a tree cat to get past the typing with claws and syntax errors and focus on the 'toolness' of the software. It would still take someone like Horace to build such a customized, and more AI like interface, and add a few more detailed, non-traditional tools to the tree cat's kit of software pieces. But I could also see the different mindset approaching problems a completely different way and find elegant solutions for long standing problems. Or fresh challenges for security systems. Imagine trying to find hidden data like chasing down prey, attacking firewalls and security systems to trick them into giving away their security codes like trying to steal food from a hexa-puma, and trying to crack encryption systems like trying to understand two-legs. Not guaranteed to work in any one case, but with two completely different approaches applied to an urgent problem being able to do so much better than either alone. And for the toughest nuts to crack, levering each other inward step by step as one makes a break through that makes it easier for the other to attach the next step. Would be beauty in motion to see that happening in real time as they saw it (wistfull sad/happy face).

Anyway, sorry for rambling, and don't take the suggestions to hard. I am as ignorant of tree cats as you are! ;)

Mike"