Dark Alex's Really Long Post Thread.

[316zombie]

do you get to make people turn off their devices, i hope? that's the biggest complaint i here about watching a movie communally, in an enclosed space.

[Alex]

If someone was on their phone I would indeed ask them to leave. Cannot abide people with no manners or consideration of others.

[Alex]

I was watching the veterans this morning, preparing to travel over the channel once again and recreate their journey. One ex para trooper old boy is even going over in a Dakota in the same seat he travelled over in back in '44 and going to jump again. Not bad for a man who must be in his 90s or more. Part of me is wishing I'd volunteered to help out down there, but for various personal reasons I decided it would be a bad idea.

Rather wet outside. What happened to the "even hotter than last year" summer we were predicted to have? I blame "Jack" Ryan (the inaction hero). It is just me and him manning the desks this week, although the new sgt is in as well but he is still dealing with stuff from his previous role.

Still, I've been working through chapter five of my story and making plenty of (slow) progress. Hell even if it never gets published, at least I can say to myself I wrote a book. Did decide on where the first book will end and I am working my way towards that. Trouble is, I was aiming for 40,000 words and apparently I need 90,000 words (or more since fantasy novels tend to be on the bulky side). Maybe I'll extend the first one out then until the first (permanent) major character death.

And just for Barri because I know she told me how much she loves this:

1489 days to go. In 1489 Leonardo da Vinci Paints Lady with an Ermine, although the woman who commissioned the painting hated it and had bits changed. The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to the Republic of Venice. The Treaty of Medina del Campo between England and Spain includes provision for a marriage between Arthur, the son of King Henry VII of England, and Princess Catherine of Aragon. King James IV granted Andrew, Lord Gray, the lands and Barony of Lundie. elhi Sultanate: Sikandar Lodi succeeds Bahlul Khan Lodi as sultan. Arthur Tudor is named Prince of Wales. Jeannetto de Tassis is appointed Chief Master of Postal Services in Innsbruck; his descendants, the Thurn und Taxis Family, later run much of the postal system of Europe. Typhus first appears in Europe, during the Siege of Baza. A gold coin equal to one pound sterling, called a sovereign, is issued for Henry VII of England. King Henry VII of England gives a city charter to Southwold. Lucas Watzenrode becomes bishop of Warmia and Johannes Widmann publishes his mercantile arithmetic Behende und hüpsche Rechenung auff allen Kauffmanschafft in Leipzig, containing the first printed use of plus and minus signs, to indicate trading surpluses or shortages.

[Trevor]

btw, how was the projectionist experience?

I'm a trained projectionist, film, not digital unfortunately.

I think there are only two cinemas in South Africa which can still screen films, sadly. 

[Alex]

Well the cinema stuff went off ok. There were a couple of minor hitches which were solved. I got everything all set up in time which is the main thing. Kristi is going to be learning how to do it all next week.

Ash decided to be his normal, default of incredibly happy baby this morning. It was nice to see him return to being that way after a week of him randomly crying lots. Seeing him just laughing and giggling for the past couple of days is great.

Hopefully he is giving his mum an easy time of things. Still, even when he is being difficult he is easier than most other any child I have encountered. We had some friends over for dinner earlier in the week and they were amazed at how easily he went down to sleep and that he normally sleeps all the way through the night.

As my workmates have problems telling me and the flight sergeant apart I sent him this email, along with an attached sign.

Flight,

As my workmates appear not to be able to tell the difference between us I have came up with a solution. If you could kindly print out the attached document and wave it around whenever you enter our office it would be greatly appreciated. I have a similar placard that declares me to be ‘Not the Flight Sgt!’

Hopefully this will help clear up any confusion over which one of us is which.

Regards,

Alex

He sent back the following reply.

Alex,

I actively encourage great ideas…..ahem……like I said I actively encourage great ideas!

Unfortunately the attached doesn’t conform to dress standards so I must decline. All Service personnel get Service General Training as part of Ph1 training which includes the different ranks, rank insignia and rank structures of the RAF, so if your workmates are failing to recognise the difference between a Cpl and a FS then I think they might need to revisit this training! With an SMTD coming up I’m sure I can get a smart Air Cadet to deliver some training in an evening!

Regards

Dinky.

I showed the others the emails which they thought were funny. Bet they won't be laughing when they find out that Dinky is actually serious about making them come in for some extra training. Mwah hah hah!

[Alex]

Friday. At once the best and most frustrating day of the week.

I was having a great day until I got to work and then it all went south quite rapidly as I had to find out if someone else last night had made a huge mistake or not and there was nothing to say they had carried out some urgent work that came in last night and some circumstantial evidence to say they hadn't. Anyway, after half an hour of digging I managed to confirm the work had been done. All because someone had left an email flagged instead of ticking it to say they had completed the task.

Nice weather out of both the south and west windows. It is unusual for both windows to show the same weather and today is no exception to the norm though (clear skies to the west, some clouds in the south).

Kristi is babysitting some friends kids and wants to take them to the cinema on camp. I did have plans to go into Elgin and pick up some stuff for the garden, so I'll need to decide between helping her or getting the garden done.

I wonder if the anyone has any stocks of napalm kicking around. If I could get some dropped on my lawn then I wouldn't need to worry about the gardening.

Oh well, having dealt with a lot of crap (unnecessarily too, if someone else had done their job right), the morning has mellowed out into a quiet one. Just as well, I was feeling ready to treat people the way they deserve. Did take a walk down to the shop to get a bacon roll more to get out the office and chill for 20 minutes than actually because I was hungry.

[Alex]

Got up early this morning since I'd woken up at four. Closer to half seven though before I decided to get out of bed, just lay there thinking random thoughts about the world and whatnot.

Was doing stuff on my desktop when suddenly it froze up and crashed. Shut it down, restarted and got a message about how it couldn't find a drive or boot source. Spent the morning stripping it down, cleaning it out and then rebuilt it all and it seems to be running fine now.

Decided to see what my novel would look like printed out so got some A5 paper and printed it out (ok, that's going to be hardback size rather than softback but got to work with what I got). I had thought my chapters were perhaps a bit short but it turns out they are actually on the longer side of average size. Guess I'll stop worrying about that then. Or at least try to. Seven to nine pages just seems a bit short to me still.

Ash and Kristi are now awake and downstairs. Kristi made breakfast while I got the laundry on and changed Ash's nappy.

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Seems like an apporpriate song for just now.

[316zombie]

my trivia mad brain really DOES like your "#ofdays" posts! and one f the boards i post on has a did you know section( yes, they are also weirdos, not just chefs) , i post A LOT of the stuff you rattle off..in my best"pedantic" typing voice, lol!
   trev, we don't have many here either. my pal mark who lives in michigan has one, if you ever get over here, i'll find a way to take you to see it.

[Alex]

Ordered myself some bits and pieces for my Japanese and British Empire armies. Looking to round out the basics so the armies have enough selections to make decent tabletop forces.

Anyway, the Japanese are getting a Flame Thrower, Sniper, and a small artillery piece. One of the guns typical of the Japanese military at the time that compared to what the rest of the world had, makes me ask the question again.

How the hell did the Japanese manage to do so much with so little? Oh, I know the answer. Japan, much like Germany was only prepared for a short war and was always going to lose a stand up slug fest. Their entire military was set up to handle a short, sharp war not a long drawn out fight. In the same as the Confederacy did well until they lost and once they started losing could never turn the war around, they couldn't replace losses quickly enough, didn't have the industrial base and natural resources required to sustain a war machine. But it still impresses the hell out of me that they achieved as much as they did.

If only the will to make such achievements could have been used for a better, nobler cause.

Anyway, my British troops are being bolstered by a medium mortar, medium machine gun team, and a SAS section. Plus paints for my Desert Rats.

Watching an Asylum movie called Monster Island. Guessing it is a Godzilla cash in. Asylum movies (much like syfi ones) tend to just take themselves too seriously to be fun enough as if the actors arn't actually aware how bad their efforts are. Still, I guess they keep a lot of actors and set workers from starving, so that's a good thing. Right?

Oh well, time to go get some work done. It is nice enough weather that some overdue gardening can be done.

[Alex]

Front garden is done, back one still to go. But progress has been made so I'll put that down as a plus.

Got tonight's adventure ready. I had thought it was all done and then found I was missing the guts of a major encounter I had planned out. Got it all caught up with now though. Wonder if I'll manage to get chapter 6 done of my book next week. Takes a lot longer than it used to to write stuff. The joys of having a family I guess. Worth it though.

Hoping Ash sleeps well tonight. He has been waking up around 22:00 and not going to sleep until after midnight. We've taken it in shifts to look after him and Kristi wanted the first shift, but he has then went to sleep before my shift, so I am hoping she gets a full nights sleep tonight. I might have to just bite the bullet and go into work tired tomorrow if he doesn't. Kristi does have the advantage though that if he does sleep during the day, she can get her head down too.

Decided on having a few beers tonight while we gamed. I thought it was a good session, if a little combat heavy. Normally I'd throw two fights a night at the group, but this time they managed four even thought the game didn't start until an hour later than usual. Kristi did manage to avoid a fight by using one of her spells to avoid a combat, so I guess she gets all the XP's for that battle all to herself. Quite a hefty amount too.

[Alex]

Life continue, despite how fragile everything really is as we cling to a ball of rock rushing around in space, which is an insanely hostile environment to us. No big space rocks have smacked into us, cosmic rays wiping the planet clean of life, comets bumping into us, mega-volcano's plunging us into a deadly winter or any of the man made ways we have added to the hurdles our species has to go through to survive.

Amazing really that we've made it this far.

1482 days left to go. In 1482 the village of Alhama de Granada in Spain is taken by the Christian forces, starting the Granada War to expel the moors from the Iberian Peninsula back to Africa. Pope Sixtus IV, in a special bulla, grants self-government rights to the Italian town of Ascoli Piceno. The death of Mary of Burgundy triggers the first of the Flemish revolts against Maximilian of Austria. Anglo-Scottish Wars: Richard, Duke of Gloucester invades Scotland, and captures Edinburgh. Capture of Berwick: The Scots surrender the border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed to Richard, ending his campaign. Berwick-upon-Tweed changed hands between Scotland and England a lot. Finally we made them keep it. If you've ever been there, you'll understand.

The Portuguese erect the Fort of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle) near the mouth of the River Benya, on the Gold Coast. Tizoc rules the Aztecs. Diogo Cão, a Portuguese navigator, becomes the first European to sail up the Congo. Ivan III renounces the Mongol Khanate rule over Russia. Johann Reuchlin visits Florence, and meets Marsilio Ficino. Johannes Trithemius becomes a novice, at the abbey of St. Martin at Sponheim, in the Diocese of Mainz. The first edition of Euclid's Elements (Latin translation) is printed, by German printer Erhard Ratdolt in Venice, incorporating geometric diagrams. Schreierstoren is erected in Amsterdam (from which Henry Hudson will set sail on April 4, 1609, on the vessel Halve Maen, to bring him to the harbor of New York and the Hudson River).

[Rev. Powell]

Why are you no longer Dark, Alex?

[Alex]

Decided on a change. Going to do a new profile pic too. I've not been feeling as dark as I used to be for a couple of years now.

[Rev. Powell]

Decided on a change. Going to do a new profile pic too. I've not been feeling as dark as I used to be for a couple of years now.

Fatherhood has made you soft! 

[Alex]

Decided on a change. Going to do a new profile pic too. I've not been feeling as dark as I used to be for a couple of years now.

Fatherhood has made you soft! 

Agreed.