Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

This working for living sucks. Prepping for Ash's fourth birthday on Wednesday.

Wow, four years already I've been a father. Over 9 years a husband, 20.67 years a soldier (I have that figure because our computer system just told me that while I was looking for some other info). Sometimes I really wonder "Wow, is any of that really me or am I just having some weird dream?". I am happy with my life, don't get me wrong. I just often find myself not quite 100% sure how I managed to achieve it all.

For anyone who isn't having as quite a good day as me, well just remember this song:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

Certainly cheers me up when I am having a crap day.

We picked him up a big present each just before the show on Saturday, but he has a doctors appointment tomorrow, so we are going to get him a few smaller things. I've been more organised about Yule presents this year than I have birthday ones by a big margin. Then again, since I bought one of Kristi's presents for this year 2 years ago (it should arrive around October), it would be hard to beat that.

[Trevor]

This working for living sucks. Prepping for Ash's fourth birthday on Wednesday.

Wow, four years already I've been a father. Over 9 years a husband, 20.67 years a soldier (I have that figure because our computer system just told me that while I was looking for some other info). Sometimes I really wonder "Wow, is any of that really me or am I just having some weird dream?". I am happy with my life, don't get me wrong. I just often find myself not quite 100% sure how I managed to achieve it all.

For anyone who isn't having as quite a good day as me, well just remember this song:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

Certainly cheers me up when I am having a crap day.

We picked him up a big present each just before the show on Saturday, but he has a doctors appointment tomorrow, so we are going to get him a few smaller things. I've been more organised about Yule presents this year than I have birthday ones by a big margin. Then again, since I bought one of Kristi's presents for this year 2 years ago (it should arrive around October), it would be hard to beat that.

That song reminds me of another thing I don't have 

[Alex]

This working for living sucks. Prepping for Ash's fourth birthday on Wednesday.

Wow, four years already I've been a father. Over 9 years a husband, 20.67 years a soldier (I have that figure because our computer system just told me that while I was looking for some other info). Sometimes I really wonder "Wow, is any of that really me or am I just having some weird dream?". I am happy with my life, don't get me wrong. I just often find myself not quite 100% sure how I managed to achieve it all.

For anyone who isn't having as quite a good day as me, well just remember this song:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

Certainly cheers me up when I am having a crap day.

We picked him up a big present each just before the show on Saturday, but he has a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so we are going to get him a few smaller things. I've been more organised about Yule presents this year than I have birthday ones by a big margin. Then again, since I bought one of Kristi's presents for this year 2 years ago (it should arrive around October), it would be hard to beat that.

That song reminds me of another thing I don't have 

Its the four cavemen riding a dinosaur right? Yeah, I don't have one of them either.

[Trevor]

This working for living sucks. Prepping for Ash's fourth birthday on Wednesday.

Wow, four years already I've been a father. Over 9 years a husband, 20.67 years a soldier (I have that figure because our computer system just told me that while I was looking for some other info). Sometimes I really wonder "Wow, is any of that really me or am I just having some weird dream?". I am happy with my life, don't get me wrong. I just often find myself not quite 100% sure how I managed to achieve it all.

For anyone who isn't having as quite a good day as me, well just remember this song:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

Certainly cheers me up when I am having a crap day.

We picked him up a big present each just before the show on Saturday, but he has a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so we are going to get him a few smaller things. I've been more organised about Yule presents this year than I have birthday ones by a big margin. Then again, since I bought one of Kristi's presents for this year 2 years ago (it should arrive around October), it would be hard to beat that.

That song reminds me of another thing I don't have 

Its the four cavemen riding a dinosaur right? Yeah, I don't have one of them either.

That's another thing I don't have 

[Alex]

I have a great fondness for watching out for unintended consequences. When something is changed (normally with good intentions), and some unpredictable side effect kicks in.

A very minor example of this jumped out at me unexpectedly today. We had a child born on March 9th and called him Ash. Today is his birthday, and by coincidence, it is also Ash Wednesday. It does not feel like 4 years since he came into our lives. I remember holding him while Kristi was still in surgery, this tiny human in my arms. Watching him struggle to open his eyes with all the gunk on them and then being the first thing he saw (it should have been his mum, but that just wasn't possible). We had him at physio earlier in the week, and they have been impressed with the progress we've made working with him and his hand, to the point where they no longer think surgery will be required, so I am happy with that.

In last night's D&D game we managed to take down a Green Dragon. Feeling rather chuffed about that. It was not without some pain though, the druid lost her pet wolf (RIP Tikkani, that animal was a beast in combat) when it caught the full force of a blast of acid breath. My wizard/cleric ended the fight with a single hit point left, and two other party members came very close to dying. I was running around using a potion of invisibility, healing the main fighter (because it was being played by Kristi and I'd get nasty looks if I let her die). The funniest part of the night for me was when I decided to smack the dragon with my wizards staff and got a critical hit on it. It was the biggest single hit inflicted on it during the fight. Shame it wasn't the killing blow. Anyway, we got a nice enough horde of treasure from it, including a magic wand that has a few charges left in it so I can send acid arrows towards foes that are immune to my enchantment spells and generally messing around with their heads (I admitted to another party member that I wasn't actually powerful enough to turn him into a spider, however I was powerful enough to make him think he was a spider and force him to spend the rest of his life that way).

It is looking very much like the Russian Federation is going to default on its international debt repayments. The classes I did that covered international economics didn't cover what happens when an entire country defaults so I have no idea what will happen as a consequence, but it will be... interesting to observe. I would imagine the credit rating (which I would suspect is fairly low anyway, given how badly and corruptly ran the Federation is) will plummet making borrowing even more expensive (and thus making future defaults more likely in a viscious circle), interest rates will spiral, small businesses will crumble.

All because one man wants to rebuild a fallen empire. Rough times are ahead for the Russian people. Not as rough as the times facing Ukrainian ones though.

[Alex]

An article I read earlier today. Personally, I only ever thought the internet would offer any level of free information until governments learned how to tame it. They would never leave a resource like that uncontrolled for long.

I used to believe several things about the 21st century that Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump's election in 2016 have shown me are false. I assumed:
Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the Oval Office in 2017.
Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine in 2017, ex-ambassador says in book
Read more

Nationalism is disappearing.

I expected globalization would blur borders, create economic interdependence among nations and regions and extend a modern consumer and artistic culture worldwide.

I was wrong. Both Putin and Trump have exploited xenophobic nationalism to build their power. (Putin's aggression has also ignited an inspiring patriotism in Ukraine.)

Nations can no longer control what their citizens know.

I assumed that emerging digital technologies, including the internet, would make it impossible to control worldwide flows of information and knowledge. Tyrants could no longer keep their people in the dark or hoodwink them with propaganda.

Wrong again. Trump filled the media with lies, as has Putin. Putin has also cut off Russian citizens from the truth about what's occurring in Ukraine.

Advanced nations will no longer war over geographic territory.

    I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable. I fear I was wrong

I thought that in the "new economy", land was becoming less valuable than technological knowhow and innovation. Competition among nations would therefore be over the development of cutting-edge inventions.

I was only partly right. While skills and innovation are critical, land still provides access to critical raw materials and buffers against potential foreign aggressors.

Major nuclear powers will never risk war against each other because of the certainty of "mutually assured destruction".

I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable.

I fear I was wrong. Putin is now resorting to dangerous nuclear brinksmanship.

Civilization will never again be held hostage by crazy isolated men with the power to wreak havoc.

I assumed this was a phenomenon of the 20th century and that 21st-century governments, even totalitarian ones, would constrain tyrants.

Trump and Putin have convinced me I was mistaken.

Advances in warfare, such as cyber-warfare and precision weapons, will minimize civilian casualties.

I was persuaded by specialists in defense strategy that it no longer made sense for sophisticated powers to target civilians.

Utterly wrong. Civilian casualties in Ukraine are mounting.

Democracy is inevitable.

I formed this belief in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union had imploded and China was still poor. It seemed to me that totalitarian regimes didn't stand a chance in the new technologically driven, globalized world. Sure, petty dictatorships would remain in some retrograde regions of the world. But modernity came with democracy, and democracy with modernity.

Both Trump and Putin have shown how wrong I was on this, too.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians are showing that Trump's and Putin's efforts to turn back the clock on the 21st century can only be addressed with a democracy powerful enough to counteract autocrats like them.

They are also displaying with inspiring clarity that democracy cannot be taken for granted. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It's not what governments do. Democracy is what people do.

Ukrainians are reminding us that democracy survives only if people are willing to sacrifice for it. Some sacrifices are smaller than others. You may have to stand in line for hours to vote, as did tens of thousands of Black people in America's 2020 election. You may have to march and protest and even risk your life so others may vote, as did iconic civil rights leaders like the late John Lewis and Martin Luther King.

You may have to knock on hundreds of doors to get out the vote. Or organize thousands to make your voices heard. And stand up against the powerful who don't want your voices heard.
The statue of Abraham Lincoln is illuminated at sunrise as a visitor walks through the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Lincoln and the fight for peace: John Avlon on a president in the shadow of new war
Read more

You may have to fight a war to protect democracy from those who would destroy it.

The people of Ukraine are also reminding us that democracy is the single most important legacy we have inherited from previous generations who strengthened it and who risked their lives to preserve it. It will be the most significant legacy we leave to future generations – unless we allow it to be suppressed by those who fear it, or we become too complacent to care.

Putin and Trump have convinced me I was wrong about how far we had come in the 21st century. Technology, globalization and modern systems of governance haven't altered the ways of tyranny. But I, like millions of others around the world, have been inspired by the Ukrainian people – who are reteaching us lessons we once knew.

Hopelessly nieve imo and only learning it too late.

[Alex]

Nice sunny day out today.

Shame I am stuck in the office though. For another 477 days anyway.

Judging from the photos, there was a fantastic view of the northern nights in Lossiemouth last night. Some of the pictures made the national news. Oh well, I've seen them before and did everything I wanted to under their light. Bloody cold having a midnight picnic on the beach let me tell you.

Could be worse though. At least I've never invaded another country without enough troops and have to beg for supplies from another country. I think Putin has effectively put his country in China's back pocket.

[Alex]

It was a frosty morning when I left the house, but it looks like a lovely day outside right now.

Ash had 7 vaccinations last week. He has been feeling the effects for the past few days and we've not had a lot of sleep in our household as a result. Mostly he is waking up between 1 and 2 am. He got a full nights sleep last night and so did we.

Ah, bliss.

I took him to a kid's birthday party a few weekends ago. It was in the local town hall and the parents had hired a pair of indoor bouncy castles. There were lots of balloons around and the kids had all been handed whistles (I'll let you figure out how that sounded for yourselves). The only person I vaguely knew there was a woman with a kid (Mason) the same age as Ash who normally walks home with her on the way back from nursery. Anyway, Ash has a balloon and momentarily runs around the side of a bouncy castle out of my sight. When he comes back, he doesn't have the balloon. A few seconds later Mason walks out with it. Didn't think too much about that, but Ash gets another balloon and the same thing happened. Later on when Ash had one, I saw Mason walk up to him and take the balloon off him. Ash started trying to get it back and the two kids started fighting a bit. I let it go for a bit because I want Ash to stand up for himself, but Mason's mother quickly stepped in. I kept an eye on the other kid for the rest of the day and anytime Ash got anything, Mason was trying to get it off him. Normally his mum would step in and stop his behaviour, but I did growl at Mason that he was to leave Ash alone. I was quite happy that Ash was standing his ground and fighting back when Mason tried to force him off a bike he was riding and take it off him.

Anyway, when I got back I told Kristi about what had been happening. She told me that she'd been watching Mason a bit closer when they've been walking home and has reached a similar conclusion to me about the kid (she described him as a little stinker, whereas I'd said he was a little s**t). From the way he treats other kids, I am figuring he is going to grow up to be a bully. It is shame to see something like that in someone so young.

Anyway, despite those goings-on, Ash had a great time at the party. It has reinforced my decision to send him to some martial arts classes when he is ready. I think that will be sometime in the next year. Peace, love and non-violence is all great, and I hope I am able to show Ash how to appreciate and strive for those things, but I also want to prepare him for the world as it is, not what I would like it to be like.

[Alex]

A while ago I wrote about how in previous times people had some great evil to make a stand against (or not, depending on their views, but it was there) and how we lacked something similar that we could fight against.

My how things have changed since then. It is interesting to see who is on which side though.

[Alex]

Looking out my window this morning resembles a scene from the Birds. Or maybe Birdemic... Hundreds of seagulls just hanging around and making a crapload of noise.

Generally, I like animals, but seagulls (along with pigeons and flying insects) are exceptions to that.

We had a slight storm last night and that always brings the sea birds in.

Prepping a three-player game of Bolt Action. It will be me against Ross and Kristi. Going to take the Germans and be defending a bunker complex in Normandy against a combined British / American force. I'll have 1000 points plus a bunker while they get 800 points each. About half my army will start on the table and the rest will turn up as reinforcements, so I reckon they should win, but I will have to see how it goes. Unfortunately, the army list I am using does not allow me access to any of the big cat tanks, but I can squeeze in a Puma armoured car.

Hmm, maybe since my reinforcements are arriving randomly I should up my force to 1200.

We took Ash to go see Sing 2 today. Quite enjoyed it myself and Ash sat quietly through most of it. Kristi preferred the first one but I figured it wasn't bad for a sequel. Except for having Bono in it anyway. f**k Bono.

[chefzombie]

yup. bono sucks. 

[Trevor]

Except for having Bono in it anyway. f**k Bono.

Bono, Joan Jett, Bruce Sprongsteen and other virtue signalers were all a part of the group Artists United Against Apartheid in the 1980s and had a hit with the song Sun City. While I've got zero issues with them being against apartheid, all of them still allowed their music to be sold under apartheid.   

[Alex]

Because of some stuff going on at work, I told my boss that I am currently someone over 90% likely to put in my PVR and leave my job in 3 1/2 months. It does take a year from my PVR going in to me getting out the door. There are three of us in the office. While we enjoy our job, because of our management all three of us are looking to get out of the office one way or another.

Outside of when I've had to deal with dead people, today was the most depressing day I've had in my job. We have a meeting with the man responsible for all this next month when he comes up to visit.

That is going to be an interesting day.

There is a government scheme to sponsor a Ukrainian refugee and give them a home for at least 6 months. We have been talking about it and I am going to give up my mancave and convert it back into a bedroom and offer someone a roof over their head. I'll miss it to be sure, but some things are just more important alas. We would have volunteered before but with my job I just had a few things I needed to check up on first.

Oh, according to some online quiz I did today that is supposed to be able to tell these things, I have slept with 31 women. It is a little out (although by how much and in which direction is my business lol).

[Alex]

Tuesday night's D&D session went a little off the rails. I think the poor guy running it might just hate me now.

We are exploring a ruined castle that has a slight Goblin infestation. We've killed I dunno maybe a dozen of them and are figuring we've cleared out the ground floor of them. Finding a door we hadn't opened before, my wizard (who can't cast a fireball to save his own life, but is an expert at magic that messes with people's heads), I opened it and walked in without checking the room out first.

So then I find myself standing alone in a large room, with a creature called an Owlbear, which itself is quite a large creature. As the name suggests it is part Owl part Bear, but mostly all p**sed off psychopath (most magically created races seem to be quite annoyed about it). Certainly too large to go through the door to this room. I am thinking "f**k, I am a wizard with no armour, very few hit points and no one else in this room to protect me. If I run for the door I might make it out before it gets to me, but there is a good chance I won't. What do I do?"

Having used most of my spells already taking care of the Goblins, I didn't have a lot left, but one spell did look like it might give me a chance to escape. I cast Hypnotism (which for 15 seconds makes the creature a bit more friendly towards me). I figured that when it got back to my turn, I could run out of the room. Maybe we'd pepper the beast with missile fire from a position where it couldn't hit back. The rest of the group entered through and thought well this Owlbear isn't attacking us, we have no reason to kill it. We gave it some food, petted it a bit and generally were quite nice to it. When the spell wore off, it seemed to appreciate us feeding it.

Then the group decided that we couldn't leave it trapped in this room, we had to free it. The druid used a spell to turn some of the rock around the doorway (carefully so not to cause a collapse) into clay and the Dwarf fighter dug the clay out. The ranger then led the creature out of the room it had spent its entire life in, out of the castle and let it run wild and free in the woods.

Yeah, some poor village is going to get wiped out now when it wanders across them.

An owlbear's coat ranges in color from brown-black to yellowish brown; its beak is a dull ivory color. A full-grown male can stand as tall as 8 feet and weigh up to 1,500 pounds. Adventurers who have survived encounters with the creature often speak of the bestial madness they glimpsed in its red-rimmed eyes.

COMBAT

Owlbears attack prey—any creature bigger than a mouse—on sight, always fighting to the death. They slash with claws and beak, trying to grab their prey and rip it apart.

Yup, we totally did a good deed there. We also released some wolfs that had been locked up. No doubt they can hunt down any survivors from the Owlbeasts rampage.

Unaware of the carnage he has unleashed on the world, my wizard (Juan Sanchez Villolobes Delacruz Che Fabuloso Gonzales Torres Castro Vasquez Menendez Soler Ibanez Velasco Smith), is now worried about how Mr Fluffykins is doing out there since he has no experience of surviving in the wilderness and wants to track him down.

You know the problem with threatening to use nuclear weapons is that you have nowhere else to go if someone calls your bluff. If you back down and use a different threat then you look weak. Plus if you keep continually making the same threat then eventually it loses its edge.

I picked a random movie or two to watch last night. Turned out it was set in Ukraine. I then thought I fancy something a bit martial arty, so I picked one called Forbidden Kingdom as a likely sounding candidate (without reading what the film was about). It turned out that it was actually set in Russia. I didn't get it all finished, but it seemed to be based off of the same legend as Viy which I also watched recently. I'd say the dubbing made the acting look terrible, but the English speaking actors also seemed to be putting in a poor performance (shame on you Charles Dance).

[Alex]

So the neighbouring town (technically a city but nowhere near big enough) is putting on a music festival. They are even putting on acts that I've heard of (although I'd have to be honest and say they are passed their sell-by date (S-Club, The Animals, Dr Feelgood, Geno Washington & The Ram Jam, Toploader, Bad Manners, Vengaboys and the Boomtown Rats topping the bill).

Given how much Ash loves The Animals' version of The House of the Rising Sun but hates loud noises I suspect I am going to be forking out nearly £100 on tickets to go see one band. Luckily they are the second act on, so we just need to get through S-Club's opening set. I'd be interested in watching the Boomtown Rats from a historical perspective. For anyone who hasn't heard of them, their lead singer (Bob Geldof) was one of two musicians who came up with the idea that would later become Live Aid and the various songs to raise money for famine relief in Africa). I only really know one of their songs, and that is about a school shooting though (I don't like Mondays. If I recall the story it was a girl who went on a rampage and the only clue as to why was a note left saying she didn't like Mondays).

I think it was also banned from being played on the radio in the state where it happened. My memories are a little fuzzy on that though. While I did pay attention to the news even back then, I was only 8 at the time.

Hell, I think I paid more attention to the news when I was that age than I do now. I was young enough to believe what I was hearing and reading.

Ash has also been watching a lot of C&W music, although I have a suspicion that he is more interested in watching instruments being played than caring about what the music is. In watching the music videos I've noticed that their guitarists tend to pose as if they are going to let loose with a shredding guitar solo, and then just sort of play plink, plink, plink and drop the pose.

It is leading me to the conclusion that it must be one of the simpler forms of music to play and I wonder what it would sound like with one of the '80s hair metal guitarists playing with them instead.

Something else I heard recently. So it seems Hitler was a good guy who was only killing evil Jews, not the good ones. Does anyone have the number of a good Mossad hit squad? I think I have a target for them. I wonder what they make of his equally enthusiastic extermination of anyone with left-wing politics, gipsies, disabled and all the other people who were specifically targetted for elimination? Not to mention the people who weren't deliberate targets and were just unlucky one way or another to get caught in the path of a war machine. I understand that people are stupid enough to believe this s**t, I just struggle to understand why in most cases.