Quote by mrgig00

C. Is there a particular number limit on items this time (i.e. one ship per person, 8 weapons, 1 engine/shield/deflector, etc...) or is it just a general "discouragement" for the armor, weapons, and engines provided by Engineering Personal Provisions? :

This has been brought up and is being discussed.
Tell me, what do you think would be a good limit? Or would a limit be a good idea at all?
This is an open discussion:) looking forward to your input

I see method and keep thinking "Rhythm Method" Can we call it the Provision Protocol?

Speaking of Twinks (not that I have a problem with people who have that body type, just not my cup of tea.)

I think the another major issue in our community is how we appear to the outside world because of the actions of this younger and intensely vapid subset of our community who are obsessed with being the next Bobby Trendy or Perez Hilton. Who only gossip, throw shade and say or do whatever the hell is on their mind regardless of who they might hurt or alienate.

Example: There's a guy named Johnny who works in the JustFab division of my company. That's basically like Shoedazzle but Kimora Lee Simmons is our "creative director." She doesn't design the shoes and handbags and accessories, she just signs off on them like most celebrities-turned-fashion-designers and probably cant sow a stitch. I work in the skincare/cosmetics/haircare division DSBeautygroup so I don't have much dealings with him. He's in his early 20's, tall, skinny and of Phillipino descent and his fashion role models are Michael Jackson, Kurt Hummel and Peggy Bundy (we're talking leopard jeggings and heels).

Now if you act or dress contrary to your gender I don't have a problem with that. And I might actually like this guy and "as Cher Horowitz says:" give him snaps for his courageous fashion efforts, if it wasn't for the extreme ego that colors a caustically vapid personality. Everything this guy says and does is designed to draw attention to himself. Catty shade-throwing and random non-sequiturs laced with vulgar profanities is how to interacts with everyone in the company, even the CEO.

At the company Holiday party we had a dance off and he made it to the final round. As the competition wore on he started stripping off his cute little ensemble until he was just in his skinny jeans with his Andrew Christian underwear poking out. At one point during the final round he bent over, lowered his jeans and underwear and spread himself to the audience. Yes, the whole company saw his anus and I know it made people uncomfortable. I really felt the need to go around to my fellow coworkers and say "we're not all like that."

I know it made a lot of people uncomfortable and since this was a work function those would be ample grounds for sexual harassment and an immediate dismissal but most people know that Johnny has been cited by HR for sexual harassment before and got off scott-free with a slap on the wrist. He's the web designer for JustFab and a prominent member of the "creative team" and is also featured heavily in Kimora Lee's reality show and our own marketing campaigns and Kimora loves him to death. So he does as he likes and sachets around the office not giving the time of day to anyone beneath him like he was Kimora Lee Simmons and he was a high-profile celebutant. I know a lot of talented gay people (my BF included) who could do his job way better without all the spectacle.

There are about 6 other "Out" employees at the company and we all just collectively SMH whenever he performs another antic to garner attention. I ask myself why anyone would willingly debase themselves and embrace such a vapid persona in the name of personal validation? It's ok to live out loud and want to be fabulous and let your freak flag fly, I'm all for it but there's gotta be more to it than a desperate need for attention. The pursuit of fame for fame's sake is one of the greatest follys a person can commit.

I would call him a Bitch but he would probably say "Yes, honey I am a bitch and proud of it." So I'll call him an ass instead because that's what he makes of himself everyday and I feel it reflects very poorly on the rest of us. Is he a successful gay professional in the beauty industry? Yes, totally but the attitude he projects is one that is consistently negative, shallow and painfully stereotypical of a large chunk of this town's gay community and he celebrates it. And so do a lot of other young gays just like him and I find that terribly depressing. Its unapologetic, in-your-face, rude and all in the name of "I'm fabulous and can do whatever I want." Ugh!

(sigh) There.. Rant over, I've been holding that in since December :laugh:

Quote by chemkarate

On a related note, the US is rolling out a new generation of carriers itself. The name of the class isn't as cool (Gerald R. Ford class, seriously)

Just think, eventually there will be a George W Bush class...

Honestly, though, we've had enough presidents where they had a better choice of names than a bumbling oaf who wasn't even elected. James A Garfield, Zachary Taylor, hell William Henry Harrison would have been better.

More on topic, it's very cool that the UK moved forward with the plans to make the larger carriers despite all of the detractors crying about them.

I'd still love to see a twin hull carrier built, though. I feel that I remember seeing a design that had been proposed to the US Navy, but the designers may as well have been trying to propose a floating circus tent or UFO. Anything with an appearance that breaks from the established norm rarely makes it very far with the old men in charge of approval.

agreed, we do tend to worship the people at the bars over the people actually fighting for our rights.

HAHA, really? OC? I had a way worse experience there than LA. At least with the city you had a much larger community with greater diversity. You can easy see the douche bags and stay away from them. It's as easy as just keeping your distance from particular areas of the city or just not taking them seriously.

OC, more so than even my suburban nightmare of Riverside, is so saturated with repressed, spoiled children who have a lifestyle just as image obsessed, over medicated, and promiscuous as anyone in Weho. Only difference is that they are far less honest about it... which I find to be worse. In both your and my community you also have to deal with staggering amounts of racism within the gay community and over-obsessions with young twinks.

Now some of the people i knew from Laguna and Costa Mesa that were older, more established, and just had a preference for suburbs were much nicer and more stable. But that can be said about LA or any of the gay ghettos. Just depends on who makes it through the crucible of youth in first world spoiled society.

Well the friend I was referring to now lives in New York and he did the modeling and stuff on the side for shits and giggles. I think the major issue with our obsession on body image and hyper sexuality in our ghettos is the simple fact that our local "heros" are go go dancers and porn stars. So young impressionable minds see the adulation and worship that go go dancers and porn stars receive so they begin acting accordingly. Sadly, my biggest issue with our community, especially in LA not so much OC, is the complete lack of ambition and resistance to ending self medication. They just want to drink, fuck, rinse and repeat. Achieve something? Become something better? But then I won't have enough time to "party hard" with my "friends." ::punches in throat::

A. I completely understand the return of the "Method," but I am so glad it won't last long.

B. Engineering personal provisions are out? This is why you shouldn't try to deck your whole boff roster with fleet armor.

C. Is there a particular number limit on items this time (i.e. one ship per person, 8 weapons, 1 engine/shield/deflector, etc...) or is it just a general "discouragement" for the armor, weapons, and engines provided by Engineering Personal Provisions?

Thanks again for the heads-up beforehand, and being inclusive in the decision-making process. It really means a lot, and I love my fleet because of things like this. :cheer:

Very cool! Not terribly interested in Navy hardware myself, but I think it's cool there is going to be a massive carrier class named after Queen Elizabeth.

On a related note, the US is rolling out a new generation of carriers itself. The name of the class isn't as cool (Gerald R. Ford class, seriously), but the third ship is going to be named Enterprise. It will apparently be the ninth ship to bear the name.

Also Keioel,

Given your location we probably know the same model personally. And after being a friend to this person for a good decade now, I can tell you that his appearance as a nice, fun person (and at one point a huge Star Trek fan) hides a very dark, selfish, and dangerous side. Given our history I count my blessings that I emerged from our time hanging out together with my health, career, self-respect, and -mostly- spotless reputation.

Those that I have worked with at different events didn't seem to show much more substance than that one did... but I haven't met them all.

Quote by Araa

"Some people may be fraudulently joining the fleet to purchase weapons" - Here we could use the same technique used by other fleets and use a waiting period before allowing new members access to the store. I haven't seen any fleet take the totally open approach that we do, making us potentially an easy target...

...And, always thinking of our desire to continually improve the fleet, there may be a lesson in this outcome. As you may recall, every member involved in our previous discussion was concerned about this happening and suggested ways to avoid it. While I was highly impressed to see the leadership team take a much more bold and risky decision than any of the members were comfortable taking, perhaps in retrospect we should have incorporated a few of the members' ideas and taken a more measured approach to rolling the new solution out.

I'm personally quite interested in continuing input from everyone on this issue, but it's important for everyone to have accurate information, so we're all on the same page as the discussion progresses.

I just wanted to clarify that the fleet store has never been "completely" or "wide-open" for anyone to make purchases, as has been suggested. New members to join the fleet, do so at 'cadet rank', and remain at that rank for a minimum of two weeks, not just after joining the fleet, but also after having created an account on this website, and having made an introductory post on the forums. This provides us with a bit of additional information about our prospective member, before we consider promoting them past the probationary rank. As a cadet, purbases cannot be made from the fleet stores.

Only after the probationary period has expired and no complaints or other red flags about the cadet have arisen, will the prospect be promoted to 'member' status. Only upon obtaining full member status, are they in a position to make purchases from the fleet stores.

I'm not sure if you were aware of this or not, Araa, or if you refer to it as a "wide-open" story policy, because in your view, the probationary period is just too inadequate to address your security concerns. If that's the case, then that's completely fine... that's why we're asking people to weigh in... but it's important that everyone else is aware of what's actually in place, so that informed conversation can take place moving forward :)

Upwards and onwards!

Dave.

yeah its kinda a self sustaining problem. Just doesn't help to prop up people who are an exception, not the rule.

I wouldn't doubt that some of the models are nice people... But having worked with them on a couple of community events I can say they aren't very different from many other "models" in the gay world. Alot of undeserved sense of importance when compared to the many other things people do and try to accomplish.

As I said, those who are using the situation to prop themselves up later through the investment of time, money, and connections gained through this have my respect. But given the fail-success rate... alittle too soon to call this kid a "role model". Also, as I said, Full Frontal Freedom has issues with credibility and -whatever the relationship is with Andrew Christian- there are problems.

P.S. I have no issue with people having lots of sex, I think sexual repression is a huge problem for our society in general... It's the lack of priority in protection and responsibility that I worry about common with this business.

Yes, it's not the one I took so I can't vouch to it's efficacy but the test has been around forever so it'd be pretty hard to screw the pooch too hard. TAKE IT!!

Always been fascinated by navy hardware, there is a Nimitz-class stationed in San Diego. Things a monster when you see it in person, a floating city. Good for the UK, they have always been a strong power in tech advancement for naval use. Haha a very long and noble tradition.

My animal: the Venezuelan Beaver

My color: Mommy "fell down the stairs and hurt her eye" Purple.

More seriously, no I haven't, is THIS the one you're referring to? http://www.colorcode.com/free_personality_test/

I actually know some of the models personally and while yes they have lots of sex, quite a few of them are kind genuine people who are worth knowing. Now, as to the other type...yeah they're douche bags.

Edit:
I do agree though that there is a general problem in our community where we are hyper focused on appearance to exclusion of much else. However, lezbihonest, we have and continue to perpetuate this focus ourselves. If we want companies in our community to change we need to economically make it viable for them to do so.

Araa are you familiar with the color personality test? Also referred to as the animal test? Cause if so I'm pretty sure I've guessed your color but would love to hear what the test said you were. ;)

Well, I figure that, for once, I might as well contribute to a discussion on fleet provisions. :-D I highly appreciate that you guys are involving the entire community in solving this issue for the long term. Definitely makes me feel valued and I find I always learn something from the quality of the contributions to these threads. Thanks!

I do like the temporary gateway approach to rebuild, and it should be vastly easier once we get rid of the fab bottleneck.

On the positive side of this problem, it's good to see provisions being actively used by the fleet rather than sitting in a bank, and it's also encouraging that it's only been a problem for one class of provisions! All in all it seems pretty successful so far.

For the way forward, as to whether we keep the gatekeeper method permanently or not, the next step should probably be based on *why* we think we're running out of those provisions. Here are some possible explanations and a shot at their implications on our next move, decide which ones you think might be happening:

"All provisions are being used by fleet members who are buying reasonable quantities, we're just running out due to demand" - In this case, where fraud and over-purchasing don't exist, the right solution would be to leave it permanently open. There's no benefit to building up 100 provisions and monitoring who gets them, since the right people are already getting them.

"Some members may be buying too many weapons" - In this case I'd recommend to start with voluntary guidelines, where a fleet email and occasional MotDs are used to remind people to only purchase up to a certain limit. I do agree that this is a soft approach that depends highly on communication, so the gatekeeper may be required if this totally fails. Personally, I'd like to think we'd behave responsibly enough to make this work.

"Some people may be fraudulently joining the fleet to purchase weapons" - Here we could use the same technique used by other fleets and use a waiting period before allowing new members access to the store. I haven't seen any fleet take the totally open approach that we do, making us potentially an easy target. While a fleet credit contribution minimum is normally used simply because it's dead easy to administer, a seniority-based period could be used as well. In the latter case, we'd probably have to ask people to self-report when they've passed the minimum amount of time and need to be promoted to a requisitioning rank. It would be harder to administer than the credit-based approach, but still require much less effort than the gatekeeper solution.

Personally, I always prefer taking the more cautious approach, so my recommendation hasn't changed from our previous discussion, which is that, after rebuilding our stocks, we should try the open store approach with both of the above precautions (i.e., voluntary guidelines and a waiting period) and see if that will slow down demand sufficiently. The third idea previously proposed, a gradual roll-out starting with DSS and HNR in order to assess any risks and avoid exhausting all of SW's provisions, is obviously moot now.

________________

And, always thinking of our desire to continually improve the fleet, there may be a lesson in this outcome. As you may recall, every member involved in our previous discussion was concerned about this happening and suggested ways to avoid it. While I was highly impressed to see the leadership team take a much more bold and risky decision than any of the members were comfortable taking, perhaps in retrospect we should have incorporated a few of the members' ideas and taken a more measured approach to rolling the new solution out.

It's not the end of the world, particularly if most of the demand is meeting a valid need of fleet members, but it's just a thought. I'll be very interested to hear other peoples' thoughts on why we have had such a run on that one provisioning class.

Cheers,

Araa/John aka "The guy who spends WAY too much time worrying about provisions" ;-)

P.S. Given that we're gonna be using gatekeeper for at least a while, have we decided who gets to be The Keymaster?

P.P.S. pew pew

I spoke with a friend of mine about this. He also does modeling of a somewhat sexual manner. However, his is generally more artistic and more... gender bending... I suppose you could call it. However knowing him in person and seeing how incredibly negative the response can be from gay men who have the staunch view that we all should be ultra-masculine, he still holds to the conviction that you should be who you want to be regardless of public perspective.

On this I give him much more credit as a possible role model, especially since his philosophy isn't just about honesty in actions but also association; he would never support a fake charity for the sake of advertisement.

It isn't difficult to spend a few hours at a gym then just strip to your underwear for the camera. Guys like this one come a dime-a-dozen. I just hate the idea that so many people see it as a viable, sustainable, and -somehow- noble goal. I almost fell into that trap at a much younger age and learned that it's a horrible idea unless you truly are nothing but a pretty exterior with little substance.

Chemkarate-that is a far more noble goal that I'd love to see even more people strive to. There are a lot already that seem to not get the notoriety they deserve, but we continuously need more of that!

As for the idea that this problem is far grander than just the LGBT community: I agree. However, in the long standing of human civilization the general population has the foundation to choose whether or not to get tied up into these kinda of lifestyles or look up to these kinds of people. For our community this is new ground and I'd hate for the incredible examples of individuals in OUR history to be over shadowed by these terrible cliches.

I've always been a fan of navy ships, namely Destroyers and the old Battleships... I've never really been intrigued by aircraft carriers, though I have to say that these are quite impressive.

As a proud member of the commonwealth, it's awesome to see Britain produce these cool, new ships. Also, it means we'll get your old hand-me-downs, lol.

Although our fleet of Iroquois class destroyers are aging, they've been refitted and are still cool :) If nothing else, we gave our ships bad-ass names: HMCS Iroquois, Algonquin, Huron, etc. It's too bad that in this day and age of fiscal responsibility, that we're not making as many big, cool things like the space shuttles, the Concorde etc, to show that it can be done. Our spirit of adventure has been stifled lately, which is why this project excites me :D

I thought this might be a cool thing to talk about, especially amongst my countrymen. For those that aren't aware already, Britain is currently building the largest naval ship in this country's history and we're building two of them. The HMS Queen Elizabeth Class and the HMS Prince of Wales.

Almost as large as the U.S's Nimitz class, it will be Europe's largest Aircraft Carrier and among the largest carriers in the world once completed.

I can't say how proud of my country I am, for undertaking such a feat of technological engineering and construction. These will be jaw dropping when built and are FAR larger than the "Lusty" (HMS Illustrious), our aging light aircraft carrier.

These will go a long way in re-affirming Britain's place on the stage, power projection and the security of overseas territories (I'm looking at you Argentina).

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We've always been good at punching above our weight, long may it continue! :lol: