A little anarchy, but not the hurting kind...

Displacing spinning rust

2022-06-18T18:03:15Z

(originally posted June 16 on Faceplant)
Well, that was a few hours out of my life I would love to have back...my system was acting up...I am sure it was my own fault, but it finally got to the point where I needed to do something. It was doing weird stuff like taking forever to close down or start up...which I traced to improperly setting up the drive/partition mounts parameters, and it would wait until it timed out before going to the next one, which was wrong as well...and so on. The other weird thing was that every once in a while, Konsole (KDE's command-line program) would flip upside down, and it took a lot of fiddling to reverse that. So I decided it is time to re-install Manjaro.

I keep the home directory on a separate drive & partition, and as I moved from Ubuntu KDE (Kubuntu), to Mint, and now 4 revisions of Manjaro, I kept the same home directory. This is, I think, a big part of the problem. I am sure some funky KDE parameters from Kubuntu just didn't sit well with the latest version of Manjaro. My current system had 3 operating systems, 6 drives (3 SSDs and 3 spinning rust) with a total of 26 partitions.

I decide to really re-do the Linux side of things...so only one Distro, Manjaro, and that meant cleaning off the two Linux SSD drives and using them as root and home, moving home from the spinning rust drive to the second SSD.

Big project.It took 3 tries to get it to work...first time it wouldn't install the Grub, and failed. So I had to re-arrange the UEFI boot order...carefully, so Windows will still boot. The second time it barfed on the partitioning...for some unknown reason, (I could guess, but I am griping here), the installer wants to check every partition to see what it is and then looks at the windows partitions to see if they are clean, and then if they are, if they can be resized/shrunk for use of a new Linux partition...you can guess with 26 partitions this can take a while! It was dying during that...I think it was running out of memory. I do have 16 Gig. I tried unplugging the external drives...and that finally got the install to work!

I started the project around 6 pm...it is now 2 am the next day.

Now I am doing the post install work of adding the packages I use that are not part of the defaults, like the JOE/JStar editor, Midnight Commander, etc. But this time I am taking notes of which ones I install so that, in theory, the next time I do this, and can create a script to automatically install my "usual" additions. The initial list is just a text file for now. I am also looking at using a tool called Obsidian, which is a meta-Wiki-like note-taking and information organization app. It reminds me a bit of Hypercard...

Sooo...I have to finish up things, copy over what I need from the old home directory...I don't need the many gig Download directory, for example, that can stay on the spinning rust. Add a few cosmetic things like wallpapers and such, at which point I should be finished...except for the things I forget to do...

And then, in theory, I rest. (and I did)

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kallistii @ 2020-11-10T17:15:00

2020-11-10T22:44:40Z

Well, today I got out with pheloniusfriar to run my RC vehicles for a bit. I got the RC PBR out on Mooney's Bay, and went through 3 battery packs. Lots of fun...although the wind was whipping up some large (in scale) waves, and it caused the boat to occasionally run it's waterjets out the back into the air as it came down on a wave. The Friar also took a the wheel for a while, too! Of course, we attracted some onlookers.

After that, I got my Virhuck 6x6 crawler/basher out, and after a few minutes, it think I toasted the first rear diff...they are plastic, and I had hoped to upgrade them at some point...but it looks like that will be sooner than later. But it was still a fun beast to run around with front wheel drive, and every time it accelerated from a standing start, it would spin its front wheels throwing sand everywhere! I went through two battery packs on that, again with the Friar taking a turn on it.

When we finished, on the way back we encountered an elderly gentleman carrying an RC German Tiger II tank. We chatted briefly, but he didn't seem to want to talk, but was surprised to see someone else with an RC vehicle at the beach. I retrospect, I am guessing he was German, although he he and no accent, and may have been reticent about talking about the tank he may had been crew on during the war, talking to a Canadian whose grandfather may have fought against him in Europe. The Friar and I didn't press the short conversation, and wished him well with his tank, and left.

I have more thoughts about this encounter...but I will have to decide if I want to share them.

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kallistii @ 2020-11-09T20:13:00

2020-11-10T01:19:40Z

Well, it's been a while since I last posted. Since then I am another 5 pounds lighter consistently...it varies from day to day, of course, but it averages out to about 5 pounds. If I could get under 300 this year, I would be very happy.

So the US had an election...it's definitely as win for Biden, but Trump is going to burn the down the town, and salt the earth before he leaves the White House.

In other news, for some unknown reason, I have been banned for 30 days on Facebook. It's annoying, but at least the election is over. So, campaigning for Biden is over, and the obnoxious Orange Being is on his way out.

that's all for now...

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Weight loss...

2020-09-18T01:06:03Z

Well, I have lost a total of 20 pounds since April. That, in of itself, is good. What wasn't good was the reason....discovering I had developed lactose intolerance. Part of that was spent in agony of stomach cramps, diarrhea and hours sitting on the toilet. The latter parts were not too bad, as I changed my diet and ended up eating a lot less.

My aim is to get down to, I hope around 250. I will probably never be much less than that, since a lot of my weight is in my thigh and calf muscles, which is why I can still press with my legs over 500 pounds. When I was younger and in training, I used to be able to life over a thousand pounds in a dead lift! When I was bicycling, I used to regularly break pedals... That leg strength is the main reason that I used to be good at kicking field goals and points after when I played football (North American) in my youth.

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Some more life changing news...

2020-09-15T03:58:26Z

I recently discovered that I have become lactose intolerant. This is a big thing for me, since my love of pizza is legendary. Foods that contain lactose have been a staple in my diet for a long time. So I have had to radically change my diet almost literally overnight. It has meant a lot more meat in my diet...beef, and chicken mostly. I used to like ham and cheese...but...cheese is now off the menu.

But...after a couple of months now, I have finally gotten around to trying Lactaid. I took the recommended dose, and had a 3 cheese pizza pocket. And so far, no reaction. Admittedly, just one pizza pocket is not a lot of cheese, and the usual dosage is for a meal...but I will have to continue to experiment. I am going to repeat the single pizza pocket in a couple of days...then, if that works, I will next try increasing the amount of cheese.

So that is my life at the moment. I am going to try, like I keep on saying, to post here more often.

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kallistii @ 2020-06-30T21:38:00

2020-07-01T01:43:17Z

I've decided to get back into photography. I had started getting into it back in the early 2000s, but when I got the diagnosis of having macular degeneration told I would be blind in a couple of years, I went and sold all of my photo equipment...camera, lenses, filters, flash, etc. Since then I have continued to have my eyesight, so I eventually bought a small, older Nikon D60 that fit my needs...but I've felt the urge to get back into the hobby, and also, I am still interested in starting a YouTube channel, so being able to do video with the camera is also a consideration. The D60 is only a still camera. It *is* a classic, despite being release 12 years ago, it still sells well, and I expect that I should get back what I paid for it when I bought it about 6 years ago.

Today, I bit the bullet, and ordered a new camera. It's a Nikon Z50 mirrorless camera. It not only does regular photography, but it will record video in 4K, and outputs clean HDMI out it's HDMI port, so you can use it with an external recorder, or as a super-webcam. It's a package that comes with the kit lens, and a 50-250mm lens. I've been wanting to start a Youtube channel, and this camera will give the the quality I need for that.

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kallistii @ 2020-06-23T15:06:00

2020-06-23T19:08:16Z

Well, Sunday I was up at my sister's place, and actually had a good time there. I didn't go shooting, but I did get to sit and chat with my sister, and then go out with my nephew and run my new RC boat around their pool. A hot, but nice and relaxing day, enjoying a family visit.

Did much to improve my mood.

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CT Scan

2020-06-18T11:36:58Z

On Tuesday I had a CT Scan of my heart at the Montfort Hospital. it was an interesting experience. As usual, they couldn't find my blood vessels in my arm, so they had to use one in my hand. They squirt you full of iodine to help with the imaging. Other that the IV type needle, it was pretty painless.

What was disconcerting was that to said I had been there before for a CT scan, in 2012. I have *no* memory of that. In fact they claim that I have been there for X-rays as well. Again, no memory of that, either. When I first went to to do the ultrasound, I know I had never been to the place, I had to look it up on Google Maps. I didn't recognize the parking lot. I am very sure that I have never been there before.

So I need to talk to my doctor to make sure that he never sent me there, just to make sure.

It's annoying.

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Friday...

2020-06-12T21:25:35Z

Yesterday, I finally picked up the RC Boat I have been wanting!! I still need to do a bit of assembly on it, and charge up the batteries, but I should be good to go sometime this weekend. Of course, the next problem is...where to test it out? It doesn't need to be deep, since it's a jetboat...but I will have to think about it....

The boat is interesting. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now is considered a classic film. It's a re-imaging of Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness", but set during Vietnam War. It's pretty critical of the US war effort. It's one of those films that really works best on a big screen, with great sound. Rather than a steam boat as in "Heart of Darkness", it is a river patrol boat that the main character is travelling on up the river to do his assignment. These boats were known as PBRs, and were made with plastic hulls, I kid you not. They used water jets instead of propellers, since props would catch on things in the shallow rivers of the region. The jets were designed by the Jacuzzi Brothers...yes, the hot tub people! So the RC model, an it is a very accurate model that also happens to float, and has functioning engines, is a scale replica of the PBR.

Eventually, I will repaint it, since although it comes from the factory in a nice camo green...it is the wrong camo green. It seems that the US Navy, which operated the PBR has a slightly different camo green than the US Army's camo green. Eventually, I will repaint it the correct colour.

So, that's about it for now...

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Had the Heart Ultrasound today.

2020-06-11T18:47:14Z

And...there is some ambiguity in the ultrasound...it seems there is something wrong with my heart. Great.

I am going to be wearing a heart monitor for the next two weeks. Of course, the first thing I do is look up the model, and I now have all the manuals for it, and will probably know about it than the people who issued it to me before long. :-)

I had hoped that I could get my life together, and now I keep on hitting obstacles.

I just can't get a break.

It's very depressing.

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The Weekend...again.

2020-06-07T03:14:56Z

Well, it's the weekend again. Yet another ex-mouse! I was going to go out today (Saturday), but felt too tired. I have decided to augment my collection of Radio Controlled vehicles with a boat. It's a pretty neat one, it's a "jet" boat, and it's a scale model of the type of boat in the movie Apocalypse Now, known as a PBR, (Patrol Boat, Riverine). Being a jet boat, it doesn't have any propellers that can get jammed or broken on rocks, and it can go fairly fast. I haven't had a boat since I was a kid. I found a broken RC Boat, basically just the hull and deck. All the electronics and engine has been removed. I built a mount and used an electric motor I pulled out of something, which attached a small airplane prop to, and basically turned it into an airboat. I painted it from some car paint my dad had laying around...candy apple red, which I used as a base coat, then I held a can of silver paint way above the boat, and created a nice silver on red speckled paint job on it.

I am probably going to paint my PBR, as the model maker made it a nice green colour...unfortunately, it is the *wrong* green colour. The PBRs were operated by the US Navy, not the Army, and thus were painted the Navy version of camo-green, not the Army version. I may also modify it so that it looks more like the boat in the movie.

I had also hoped to play some guitar today (Sat), but probably won't.

On Sunday, I am going to pick up the boat, and maybe assemble it. I am also hoping to take Willows APC UPS, and modify the battery compartment for the larger battery. It had sat for years, brand new in box, but the battery had never been charged...and it is dead. So in researching getting a replacement battery, it turns out that the unit is exactly the as the one with more than twice the capacity. The only difference is the back half of the shell has bits of plastic to hold the smaller battery in place. Remove those supports, and you an put a larger battery in place.

I guess that's it for now.

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kallistii @ 2020-06-01T16:46:00

2020-06-01T20:49:28Z

Many nights, I can't get to sleep easily, and it is frequently dawn before I fall asleep. During that time, I end up doing a lot of thinking...Last night, I was thinking about why I am still angry at my dad...I have a lot of very good and legitimate reasons, but I think the one that is the one that causes me most grief is my dad never said to me that he was proud of me. And although he has been dead for seven years now, it still bothers me.

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kallistii @ 2020-06-01T09:46:00

2020-06-01T20:45:55Z

"He was not what she expected, though she had already known he was tall. She’d expected someone large, bulky—bullies usually were—but he wasn’t especially muscled, and he did look very soft, quite in keeping with her assumption that he was wealthy. It didn’t look as if he ever needed to lift a hand to do anything for himself. He had a perfectly square face, a shock of blond hair, small eyes, a pouty mouth, and oddly small hands. He smirked as he made brief eye contact with her, and she sighed. This was either going to be a verbal confrontation or—a physical one.
The boy does not know what he is shoving his face into.

There was some jostling as two of his sycophants pinned her between them for a moment, blocking Master Morell from seeing her and what was happening to her, and he grabbed for her breast under cover of the crowd. There was a sudden rush of anticipatory energy as she recognized what he was doing and a surge of indignation. She, however, was a lot faster than he was, and she had been learning dirty tricks since she was old enough to train with Master Leandro. She knew exactly what to do because she’d practiced doing it so often she could make the move without even thinking about it.

Before he or his toadies had any idea she already knew what he was up to, she intercepted his hand, got a firm grasp on the little finger, and twisted her hand quickly to the side and down. Feeling the bone snap, she released his finger before anyone else had any idea that he’d reached for her, much less that she had retaliated against his assault—released it before even his nerves has registered pain. In fact, she wasn’t even sure his toadies understood she’d made a move at all before her part in the little dance was over."
- Eye Spy (Valdemar: Family Spies Book 2) by Mercedes Lackey
This character is named "Dudley Remp" Can you guess who it is based upon?

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kallistii @ 2020-05-30T00:47:00

2020-05-30T05:00:41Z

Well, it's the end of the week, and the end of the month, too! My roommate/landlord has had a great deal of success with the new mouse traps he bought...and we have 7 less mice! Woohoo!

I will probably go for a drive either Saturday or Sunday. I find these drives very relaxing. And if I bring my camera, I can sometimes get some great photos, too. I may go searching to Lake McGregor for my Great Aunt's cottage there. I would love to see that it is for sale, and maybe get together with my sister to buy it. That's a nice fantasy.

For the past week or two my allergies have really been bothering me. My eyes have been watering and feel like they full of sand. It's also triggered my Athlete's Foot, which makes the top of my feet crazy itchy! May have to do a day trip to the US when the border opens to buy some Lamisil, since I don't think you can get it here in Canada. It's the only thing that really did a number of the fungus before.

Well, that's about it for now.

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I'm back for a while...

2020-05-16T06:51:01Z

I'm feeling the need to write about things, and Facebook is definitely not the place to do so about the subjects I want to talk about. A lot of this is very depressing, and might be disturbing as well. I admit some things that I have only recently come to accept. And even if no one reads it, I needed to write it out for myself. I really should be talking about this to my counsellor, but she has been off on extended maternity leave, and she won't be available until sometime this summer. Hopefully, this will help for now, and maybe explain some things that may have been puzzling some people.

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As some of you know, I have been suffering from depression since, well, maybe as far back as the turn of the century, possibly even back to childhood . But it has been the most severe since 2012, when I was diagnosed with macular degeneration, and told I was going blind. Then my dad died, and left me taking care of my mom who was suffering from dementia. She died three years after that, and then I had to do the same for her sister, my aunt. But my aunt had a legacy that she left to my sister and I, and I now have a chance to reset my life. In part, this document is to try to get some perspective on things by writing them down. As I go along, I will be posting periodically here just to get my thoughts out as I pursue this part and time of my life.

Some of my problems that I need to work on are:

My weight:
I have recently recently come to the realization that there are a couple of reasons that I have put on a lot of weight. The first is that I have forgotten, or lost, the ability to enjoy things. The only thing that I found any joy in is food. All the foods that I ate as "celebration" as a kid were the ones that I was eating a lot of, since they made me feel better. So that was a lot of pizza, coke, ice cream. In this, they helped me get through this depression, and I am glad I didn't latch onto any other thing that are common for people to use like drugs, or alcohol.

Abused:
Add to this the fact that I was sexually abused by my parish priest in my early teens. Only recently, say the past five or six years, have I begun to remember what happened. But I always sort of knew, but didn't want to consciously acknowledge it. I told myself and others a story that I had seen the danger, and managed to avoid it. But I know that is not true. I didn't escape it until it was too late.

But it has had the side effect that I have been afraid of sex. Much as my body wanted it, my mind equated it with abuse. And so I unconsciously gained weight to make myself less attractive, less of a target to be harassed. Less chance of a becoming a victim again. On one hand, I desired sex...but I have been afraid of it. I have been to the point of actually starting to take off clothes, and I have literally run away. In other situations I can see that I unconciously sabotaged things.

This has left me really screwed up about sex and/or relationships with women. For the longest time I didn't know why I ran away. I didn't know what I wanted. I still don't. About five years ago, I decided that I really shouldn't be pursuing relationships until I knew that I wasn't so screwed up that I would be sabotaging them. consciously or unconsciously as that wasn't fair to anyone.

I also need to realize consciously that I am not a victim, and that I won't be a victim ever again. That I can love people and they can love me, and that sex not something is that icky and has bad associations. That may take some time. I do know some things. I don't find men attractive, I am happy with my gender, and I don't find trees or donkeys sexually attractive :-). There is no rush about this, and there shouldn't be one.

Compensating:
I need to work on consciously realizing that there are more things that I enjoy other than food in life, to get back to doing them, and enjoying them. That's why I have been immersing myself into aviation again. It is something I spend a lot of enjoyable time in my youth pursuing, including 4 years in Air Cadets. I need to start doing music again...and that is something I can hardly do now because of my current living situation. I need to break free of this final bound that has kept me safe, maybe a new living situation for my new life.

I also need to reverse the effects of this on my body. I have been working on changing my eating habits, with some success...and some fall backs...but a slow progression forward. I am eating a lot less, drinking a lot less coke. Now I need to become active in working on my body, and join a gym, and go at least three times a week.

Living Space:
I need to make a break with my current living situation. I am bound by it, and I need to break free of it to redefine myself. When I moved into here, I didn't see it as a permanent place...just someplace to be as I got my life together. That's why I never put up posters, etc. Add to that, depression has leached almost all of my energy to do anything. And my space, never mind the common spaces, are a real mess. I have never been a neat person, but not as messy as this. Depression feeds into the messiness, and messiness feeds back into the depression.

I was much, much better when I had my house on Carling. If that job at HP had continued, I think I might have been able to persevere through things, but HP letting all of their contractors go, then the diagnoses of macular degeneration really kicked my legs out from underneath me. I may be here for a while longer...but I need to make a change.

Possessions:
Coming into my aunt's legacy, I have come to realize that many of the things I have, I have gotten so that i don't feel poor. I grew up on the edge of being poor. Having lots of things made me feel like I had something to be a real person. I probably don't need most of what I have. I don't use most of it, although part of that is depression, and not having a place to set them up. I guess I will be getting rid of a lot of things. I need to get rid of things I don't use, things that I have kept "in case of...", things that are simply memories. I fully expect that I will be getting rid of at least half of my stuff.

Social Interactions:
I need to get out more. Most of the people I used to do stuff with are busy, having lives of their own, and with the Covid-19 pandemic, I feel even more isolated. Hopefully that will change in the future. In the meantime, I *should* try to get out and meet people and do stuff with. The fact that I am fairly shy, sometimes to the point of social anxiety doesn't help. Maybe medication for social anxiety would help.

---------------> break of a couple of months <---------------

I have been writing this post on and off for a couple of months now. In February, I came close to death due to the Flu...although I am thinking it is more likely I had Covid-19, but had a false negative test. I had all the classic symptoms, and I am now suffering from one of the more dangerous after effects, heart problems. I heart can't keep a steady rhythm, and it races at times. This has caused me to be put on twice the number of medications I was on before. Once the heart problem is sorted out, I need to get with a gym once they open up again. I can start doing stuff outside, but need good weather for that...This is the Victoria Day weekend, and at least two days look good. I am going to try to get out and do a bit of walking. I currently can't walk far, but near or far, I need to do some exercise!

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kallistii @ 2018-04-10T20:26:00

2018-04-11T00:41:14Z

Well, another week has passed by, and I have been doing OK this week. It certainly helped that I was able to head out to Long Island and see Heidi and Gary last Tuesday. We were meeting in Port Jefferson, which meant driving past Stony Brook University...it felt weird not to be turning into the campus....many found memories there.

I've also picked up some portable sound recording equipment, an older Zoom H1 for about $60, and a Lav mic. I also picked up an action camera that does 1080p. I plan to mount the camera on the dune buggy RC car that I have, 1/12th scale, and make some videos with it. The next sunny day I will try to get out and do some of that, and then post it on my YouTube channel..

This week is shaping up to be fairly good, and I hope to be able to get my aunt out for a new passport photo. Then we mail off the app & her old passport, and with any luck, have her new passport in 30 days or so. At that point, the weather should be good enough, and we will be bringing her up to Ottawa to visit for a while.

Tomorrow, I am thinking of picking up a new iPad. I have an iPad mini, but for the software I want to run on it is a little cramped on the smaller display. So the new iPad 6 has a faster CPU, and is the same size as the older iPads, 9.7". If I do, then I will be selling my iPad mini.

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I"m a bit better...

2018-04-01T06:34:22Z

At least from the mental side of things...physically, I have caught a flu of some sort. Slept most of the day, but did get out to buy groceries. I hope I am well enough to go and see my friend Heidi on Tuesday.

Not being especially rich, I tend to re-read books a lot. I was recently re-reading Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon", and he discusses, through two characters, Randy Waterhouse and Enoch Root, an interesting perspective on Pagan Gods and Goddess and how they relate to todays world.

Here is the passage...From the Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson: (around page 1024)

“Who’s the lady in the middle? The Virgin Mary?” Randy asks.

Root fingers the medallion without looking at it, and says, “Reasonable guess. But wrong. It’s Athena.”

“The Greek goddess?”

“Yes.”

“How do you square that with Christianity?”

“When I phoned you the other day, how did you know it was me?”

“I don’t know. I just recognized you.”

“Recognized me? What does that mean? You didn’t recognize my voice.”

“Is this some roundabout way of answering my question about Athena worship v. Christianity?”

“Doesn’t it strike you as remarkable that you can look at a stream of characters on the screen of your computer—e-mail from someone you’ve never seen—and later ‘recognize’ the same person on the phone? How does that work, Randy?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. The brain can do some weird—”

“Some complain that e-mail is impersonal—that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.”

“So what’s your explanation of how I recognized you?”

“I would argue that inside your mind was some pattern of neurological activity that was not there before you exchanged e-mail with me. The Root Representation. It is not me. I’m this big slug of carbon and oxygen and some other stuff on this cot right next to you. The Root Rep, by contrast, is the thing that you’ll carry around in your brain for the rest of your life, barring some kind of major neurological insult, that your mind uses to represent me. When you think about me, in other words, you’re not thinking about me qua this big slug of carbon, you are thinking about the Root Rep. Indeed, some day you might get released from jail and run into someone who would say, ‘You know, I was in the Philippines once, running around in the boondocks, and I ran into this old fart who started talking to me about Root Reps.’ And by exchanging notes (as it were) with this fellow you would be able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the Root Rep in your brain and the Root Rep in his brain were generated by the same actual slug of carbon and oxygen and so on: me.”

“And this has something to do, again, with Athena?”

“If you think of the Greek gods as real supernatural beings who lived on Mount Olympus, no. But if you think of them as being in the same class of entities as the Root Rep, which is to say, patterns of neurological activity that the mind uses to represent things that it sees, or thinks it sees, in the outside world, then yes. Suddenly, Greek gods can be just as interesting and relevant as real people. Why? Because, in the same way as you might one day encounter another person with his own Root Rep so, if you were to have a conversation with an ancient Greek person, and he started talking about Zeus, you might—once you got over your initial feelings of superiority—discover that you had some mental representations inside your own mind that, though you didn’t name them Zeus and didn’t think of them as a big hairy thunderbolt-hurling son of a Titan, nonetheless had been generated as a result of interactions with entities in the outside world that are the same as the ones that cause the Zeus Representation to appear in the Greek’s mind. And here we could talk about the Plato’s Cave thing for a while—the Veg-O-Matic of metaphors—it slices! it dices!”

“In which,” Randy says, “the actual entities in the real world are the three-dimensional, real things that are casting the shadows, this Greek dude and I are the wretches chained up looking at the shadows of those things on the walls, and it’s just that the shape of the wall in front of me is different from the shape of the wall in front of the Grecian—”

“—so that given a shadow projected on your wall is going to adopt a different shape from the same shadow projected on his wall, where the different wall-shapes here correspond to let’s say your modern scientific worldview versus his ancient pagan worldview.”

“Yeah. That Plato’s Cave metaphor.”

At this very moment some wag of a prison guard, out in the corridor, throws a switch and shuts off all of the lights. The only illumination now is from the screensaver on Randy’s laptop, which is running animations of colliding galaxies.

“I think we can stipulate that the wall in front of you, Randy, is considerably flatter and smoother, i.e., it generally gives you a much more accurate shadow than his wall, and yet it’s clear that he’s still capable of seeing the same shadows and probably drawing some useful conclusions about the shapes of the things that cast them.”

“Okay. So the Athena that you honor on your medallion isn’t a supernatural being—”

“—who lives on a mountain in Greece, et cetera, but rather whatever entity, pattern, trend, or what-have-you that, when perceived by ancient Greek people, and filtered through their perceptual machinery and their pagan worldview, produced the internal mental representation that they dubbed Athena. The distinction being quite important because Athena-the-supernatural-chick-with-the-helmet is of course nonexistent, but ‘Athena’ the external-generator-of-the-internal-representation-dubbed-Athena-by-the-ancient-Greeks must have existed back then, or else the internal representation never would have been generated, and if she existed back then, the chances are excellent that she exists now, and if all that is the case, then whatever ideas the ancient Greeks (who, though utter shitheads in many ways, were terrifyingly intelligent people) had about her are probably still quite valid.”

“Okay, but why Athena and not Demeter or someone?”

“Well, it’s a truism that you can’t understand a person without knowing something about her family background, and so we have to do kind of a quick Cliff’s Notes number on the ancient Greek Theogony here. We start out with Chaos, which is where all theogonies start, and which I like to think of as a sea of white noise—totally random broadband static. And for reasons that we don’t really understand, certain polarities begin to coalesce from this—Day, Night, Darkness, Light, Earth, Sea. Personally, I like to think of these as crystals—not in the hippy-dippy Californian sense, but in the hardass technical sense of resonators, that received certain channels buried in the static of Chaos. At some point, out of certain incestuous couplings among such entities, you get Titans. And it’s arguably kind of interesting to note that the Titans provide really the full complement of basic gods—you’ve got the sun god, Hyperion, and an ocean god, Oceanus, and so on. But they all get overthrown in a power struggle called the Titanomachia and replaced with new gods like Apollo and Poseidon, who end up filling the same slots in the organizational chart, as it were. Which is kind of interesting in that it seems to tie in with what I was saying about the same entities or patterns persisting through time, but casting slightly different shaped shadows for different people. Anyway, so now we have the Gods of Olympus as we normally think of them: Zeus, Hera, and so on.

“A couple of basic observations about these: first, they all, with one exception I’ll get to soon, were produced by some kind of sexual coupling, either Titan-Titaness or God-Goddess or God-Nymph or God-Woman or basically Zeus and whom- or whatever Zeus was fucking on any particular day. Which brings me to the second basic observation, which is that the Gods of Olympus are the most squalid and dysfunctional family imaginable. And yet there is something about the motley asymmetry of this pantheon that makes it more credible. Like the Periodic Table of the Elements or the family tree of the elementary particles, or just about any anatomical structure that you might pull up out of a cadaver, it has enough of a pattern to give our minds something to work on and yet an irregularity that indicates some kind of organic provenance—you have a sun god and a moon goddess, for example, which is all clean and symmetrical, and yet over here is Hera, who has no role whatsoever except to be a literal bitch goddess, and then there is Dionysus who isn’t even fully a god—he’s half human—but gets to be in the Pantheon anyway and sit on Olympus with the Gods, as if you went to the Supreme Court and found Bozo the Clown planted among the justices.

“Now what I’m getting to here is that Athena was exceptional in every way. To begin with she wasn’t created through sexual reproduction in any kind of normal sense; she sprang fully-formed from the head of Zeus. According to some versions of the story, this happened after Zeus fucked Metis, about whom we’ll hear more in due course. Then he was warned that Metis would later give birth to a son who would dethrone him, and so he ate her, and later Athena came out of his head. Whether you buy into the Metis story or not, I think we can still agree that something a little peculiar was going on with the nativity of Athena. She was also exceptional in that she did not participate in the moral squalor of Olympus; she was a virgin.”

“Aha! I knew that was a picture of a virgin on your medallion.”

“Yes, Randy, you do have a keen eye for virgins. Hephaestus leg-fucked her once but did not achieve penetration. She’s quite important in the Odyssey, but there are really very few myths, in the usual sense of that term, that involve her. The one exception really proves the rule: the story of Arachne. Arachne was a superb weaver who became arrogant and began taking credit herself, instead of attributing her talent to the gods. Arachne went so far as to issue an open challenge to Athena, who was the goddess of weaving, among other things.

“Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him silly; while the victim is still staggering around in a daze, that god’s wife or lover, in a jealous rage, turns him—the helpless, innocent victim, that is—into let’s say an immortal turtle and e.g. power-staples him to a sheet of plywood with a dish of turtle food just out of his reach and leaves him out in the sun forever to be repeatedly disemboweled by army ants and stung by hornets or something. So if Arachne had dissed anyone else in the Pantheon, she would have been just a smoking hole in the ground before she knew what hit her.

“But in this case, Athena appeared to her in the guise of an old woman and recommended that she display the proper humility. Arachne declined her advice. Finally Athena revealed herself as such and challenged Arachne to a weaving contest, which you’ll have to admit was uncommonly fair-minded of her. And the interesting thing is that the contest turned out to be a draw—Arachne really was just as good as Athena! Only problem was that her weaving depicted the gods of Olympus at their shepherd-raping, interspecies-fucking worst. This weaving was simply a literal and accurate illustration of all of those other myths, which makes this into a sort of meta-myth. Athena flew off the handle and whacked Arachne with her distaff, which might seem kind of like poor anger management until you consider that during the struggle against the Giants, she wasted Enceladus by dropping Sicily on him! The only effect was to cause Arachne to recognize her own hubris, at which she became so ashamed that she hanged herself. Athena then brought her back to life in the form of a spider.

“So anyway, you probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a helmet, carries a shield called Aegis, and is the goddess of war and of wisdom, as well as crafts—such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the god of war and Hestia the goddess of home economics—why the redundancy? But a lot’s been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I’m trying to impart to you here, Randy Waterhouse, was called dike by the Greeks. That’s not what Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of metis, which means cunning or craftiness, and which you’ll recall was the name of her mother in one version of the story. Interestingly Metis (the personage, not the attribute) provided young Zeus with the potion that caused Cronus to vomit up all of the baby gods he’d swallowed, setting the stage for the whole Titanomachia. So now the connection to crafts becomes obvious—crafts are just the practical application of metis.”

“I associate the word ‘crafts’ with making crappy belts and ashtrays in summer camp,” Randy says. “I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of macrame?”

“It’s all bad translation. The word that we use today, to mean the same thing, is really technology.”

“Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom, and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who’s supposed to be the god of war. And let’s just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though—maybe because—they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing—war. Heracles, who is one of Athena’s human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he’s completely incompetent. He’s chained up by a couple of giants and imprisoned in a bronze vessel for thirteen months. He’s wounded by one of Odysseus’s drinking buddies during the Iliad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point. When he’s not making a complete idiot of himself in battle, he’s screwing every human female he can get his hands on, and—get this—his sons are all what we would today call serial killers. And so it seems very clear to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are.

“Whereas Athena is famous for being the backer of Odysseus, who, let’s not forget, is the guy who comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. Athena guides both Odysseus and Heracles through their struggles, and although both of these guys are excellent fighters, they win most of their battles through cunning or (less pejoratively) metis. And although both of them engage in violence pretty freely (Odysseus likes to call himself ‘sacker of cities’) it’s clear that they are being held up in opposition to the kind of mindless, raging violence associated with Ares and his offspring—Heracles even personally rids the world of a few of Ares’s psychopathic sons. I mean, the records aren’t totally clear—it’s not like you can go to the Thebes County Courthouse and look up the death certificates on these guys—but it appears that Heracles, backed up by Athena all the way, personally murders at least half of the Hannibal Lecterish offspring of Ares.

“So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon’s head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She’s always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares.”

“I don’t know, Enoch. Defensive versus offensive war, maybe?”

“The distinction is overrated. Remember when I said that Athena got leg-fucked by Hephaestus?”

“It generated a clear internal representation in my mind.”

“As a myth should! Athena/Hephaestus is sort of an interesting coupling in that he is another technology god. Metals, metallurgy, and fire were his specialties—the old-fashioned Rust Belt stuff. So, no wonder Athena gave him a hard-on! After he ejaculated on Athena’s thigh, she’s all eeeeeyew! and she wipes it off and throws the rag on the ground, where it somehow combines with the earth and generates Erichthonius. You know who Erichthonius was?”

“No.”

“One of the first kings of Athens. You know what he was famous for?”

“Tell me.”

“Invented the chariot—and introduced the use of silver as a currency.”

“Oh, Jesus!” Randy clamps his head between his hands and makes moaning noises, only for a little while.

“Now in many other mythologies you can find gods that have parallels with Athena. The Sumerians had Enki, the Norse had Loki. Loki was an inventor-god, but psychologically he had more in common with Ares; he was not only the god of technology but the god of evil too, the closest thing they had to the Devil. Native Americans had tricksters—creatures full of cunning—like Coyote and Raven in their mythologies, but they didn’t have technology yet, and so they hadn’t coupled the Trickster with Crafts to generate this hybrid Technologist-god.”

“Okay,” Randy says, “so obviously where you’re going with this is that there must be some universal pattern of events that when filtered through the sensory apparatus and the neural rigs of primitive, superstitious people always gives rise to internal mental representations that they identify as gods, heroes, etc.”

“Yes. And these can be recognized across cultures, in the same way that two persons with Root Reps in their mind might ‘recognize’ me by comparing notes.”

“So, Enoch, you want me to believe that these gods—which aren’t really gods, but it’s a nice concise word—all share certain things in common precisely because the external reality that generated them is consistent and universal across cultures.”

“That is right. And in the case of Trickster gods the pattern is that cunning people tend to attain power that uncunning people don’t. And all cultures are fascinated by this. Some of them, like many Native Americans, basically admire it, but never couple it with technological development. Others, like the Norse, hate it and identify it with the Devil.”

“Hence the strange love-hate relationship that Americans have with hackers.”

“That’s right.”

“Hackers are always complaining that journalists cast them as bad guys. But you think that this ambivalence is deeper-seated.”

“In some cultures. The Vikings—to judge from their mythology—would instinctively hate hackers. But something different happened with the Greeks. The Greeks liked their geeks. That’s how we get Athena.”

“I’ll buy that—but where does the war-goddess thing come in?”

“Let’s face it, Randy, we’ve all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and aggressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted.”

“You must meet my friend Avi.”

“Who is going to fight them off, Randy?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to say we are.”

“Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren’t going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn’t very nice, but it’s a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis.”

“Tactical cunning, like Odysseus and the Trojan Horse, or—”

“Both that, and technological cunning. From time to time there is a battle that is out-and-out won by a new technology—like longbows at Crecy. For most of history those battles happen only every few centuries—you have the chariot, the compound bow, gunpowder, ironclad ships, and so on. But something happens around, say, the time that the Monitor, which the Northerners believe to be the only ironclad warship on earth, just happens to run into the Merrimack, of which the Southerners believe exactly the same thing, and they pound the hell out of each other for hours and hours. That’s as good a point as any to identify as the moment when a spectacular rise in military technology takes off—it’s the elbow in the exponential curve. Now it takes the world’s essentially conservative military establishments a few decades to really comprehend what has happened, but by the time we’re in the thick of the Second World War, it’s accepted by everyone who doesn’t have his head completely up his ass that the war’s going to be won by whichever side has the best technology. So on the German side alone we’ve got rockets, jet aircraft, nerve gas, wire-guided missiles. And on the Allied side we’ve got three vast efforts that put basically every top-level hacker, nerd, and geek to work: the codebreaking thing, which as you know gave rise to the digital computer; the Manhattan Project, which gave us nuclear weapons; and the Radiation Lab, which gave us the modern electronics industry. Do you know why we won the Second World War, Randy?”

“I think you just told me.”

“Because we built better stuff than the Germans?”

“Isn’t that what you said?”

“But why did we build better stuff, Randy?”

“I guess I’m not competent to answer, Enoch, I haven’t studied that period well enough.”

“Well the short answer is that we won because the Germans worshipped Ares and we worshipped Athena.”

“And am I supposed to gather that you, or your organization, had something to do with all that?”

“Oh, come now, Randy! Let’s not allow this to degenerate into conspiracy theories.”

“Sorry. I’m tired.”

“So am I. Goodnight.”

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Feeling isolated...

2018-03-26T04:26:07Z

I'm feeling very isolated here in New York. For a certain amount of time I am OK with my aunt's constant repeating...asking me if the door is locked, or what time it is, or what is the temperature or what is the date...10-20 time an hour. But lately, it's really been getting on my nerves. The people here that I know have problems of their own, and are functionally unavailable most of the time. The people in Ottawa I would love to talk to are not answering their phone, or I have no idea when they are available for a call...Or worse, I want to call, but get tied up dealing with my aunt. Maybe tomorrow, I will be able to head out and do some stuff to get me out of the apartment and have some *me* time.

Of course, add to all this, my aunt's main form of entertainment, the TV has been failing...I may have to buy a replacement TV for her soon. It's typical of equipment at is around the same age...there was a large batch of very low quality capacitors that made their way into a number of otherwise reputable manufacture's equipment. The typical failure mode is that it has a hard and "soft" power button...soft one is usually controlled by a remote, and it turns off the power to the main part of the component, but not the actual power supply...and it's in the power supply that these capacitors are...so when you try turning on the system, it won't turn on...but if you use the master switch or unplug it for a while, then try turning it on, it comes on again and is fine for some variable amount of time. Then it does the same thing...and eventualy, event unplugging it and replugging it in won't work anymore. And what is worse is that you don't know how long it is going to last! After the first time it does it, it may only do it a few more times before it fails...or it could last months!

Well enough depressing stuff from me...please let me know if you saw my previous post on March 21st, as i was trying a feature I haven't used before that I don't know if I used it correctly, so please, please let me know if you saw it, even if you didn't want to comment on it. Thanx.

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For whom the phone calls...

2017-09-18T01:35:25Z

Well, I have given up on my Nexus 5 phone...I've replaced the on-switch, the battery and the USB port...and it is still flakey. It gave me some good usage...but it's now time to move on. I have replaced it with a second hand Samsung Galaxy S5. The build quality on the Samsung phones are so much better than the LG, who made the Nexus 5 for Google. The S5 is nice, and I got it for $160 used. With any luck, it should last me at least a year or two!! The other thing is that the radio/antenna in it is much better any of the previous phones I have had. I can get a decent signal down in the basement of Willowdale with it! No more dropped calls because I twitched slightly!

Yesterday, I started sorting out my clothing. My dad was a "clothes horse", and had complete wardrobes for all seasons! So he bought me a lot of clothes. I had *13* garbage bags of clothes when I moved into Willowdale....So yesterday, after fighting off heat stroke and the like, I managed to sort through 6 of them. I reduced it all to one bag of clothes I can wear/use now, one of winter stuff (sweaters, etc), one of "memorabilia" consisting of t-shirts from various concerts and conventions I have attended...most of which won't fit me anymore, but I want to keep them anyways. Now I have two bags of stuff to get rid of...one that is going straight to charity...and other that a couple of people want to dig through...then the remains will hit the charity circuit! So 6 bags down to two and a half bags (the t-shirts *don't* fill the bag, or close to it!).

Tomorrow is my counsellor session...originally, my roomate, Willow, was going to drive me, then he was going to go to a high school reunion...so I was stuck taking the bus...the office is in Hazeldean...and I"m in South Keys...now if there was a bus that went straight across Hunt Club...I could be there is three quarters of an hour...but under the tender mercies of slow speed transpo, it takes almost two hours to get out there!! And that's if i don't miss any connections!

Luckily, for me anyways, Willow decided not to go...so it will only take me 35-40 minutes to get there! Thank you again, Willow!!!

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kallistii @ 2017-09-03T19:35:00

2017-09-03T23:54:46Z

For the past week or so, I have been having some major problems with my left knee. It's the one that was directly impacted and bent sideways during a St Joseph Jr HS Football game. I have them looked at every 5-10 years or so, and I am about due. I also have similar damage that was done to my right knee in that same incident, but not as seriously. This was part of the reason why I stopped playing football, since I had read about Bobby Orr and all the problems he had because he kept on playing with his injured knees.

I have had some chronic problems over the years with them. But now I am having a major problem with my left knee. It's very painful at times, and every time I go up or down the stairs...I get the feeling it's going to give out on me. It hasn't so far...but i am constantly thinking about what I would do if/when it does give out so that I don't panic if it happens. It's one of the great things I learned in Air Cadets in my pilot ground school is this way of thinking and continuous planning in potentially dangerous situations. They train pilots to constantly think about how an where they will land if they suddenly lost power, and I apply that to many different things. Like the time the brakes failed on my van. I had thought through a procedure if that every happened, and it did. And I was able to not only avoid an accident, but to get it safely off the road into a parking lot.

Anyways, I recently found out that I have been quoted not only by a highly influential book on cyberculture, but by The Village Voice!

I first noticed that I had been quoted in this book: Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century by Mark Dery

What I never did was click on the link to the footnotes....an it turns out that it is taken from an article in the Village Voice where I am quoted! So I need to dig up a copy, probably at the Library, of the February 13, 1993 issue of the Village Voice!

Mind blown!

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Happy Lunar Landing Day!

2017-07-20T08:13:18Z

Yes, it was in 1969, on this date, that a manned spacecraft from Earth first touched down on our closest celestial neighbour, The Moon. The first thing to touch The Moon was the contact sensor on the Lunar Module's leg...both of which were made in Canada! So Canadians should celebrate this date as well!

If you remember, I finally got a soldering iron, and did my first soldering this century...and it was...ugly. After checking it to make sure it didn't have a bridged connection or anything, I put it aside, since I didn't have anything to test it on. Today, I did some excavation of my room, and pulled out an old HP Pentium 4 system that has been taking up space under my desk. I had already decided to scrap it, and had pulled just about everything of use out of it, but it would still work, and thus was a nice test-bed for my repaired video card. I plugged it in...and it worked!!!! The first success of the day! I tested out some other video cards I had, and they all worked as well. Then I pulled the machine out, and put it into the hall way so that I can get a collection of stuff to take to a recycling place.

My second success, well, not really a success, but simply a moral booster, I got a call from my friend Heidi. And, as usual, we chatted for something like a couple of hours. Much to the annoyance of Duncan, since I had taken over the kitchen for the call, as my room has such horrible reception, that if I move the wrong way, it disconnects the call!

My next success for the day was to find the half-height nVidia video card I had, and put that into the small form factor Lenovo system I have. It's an Intel Core2 Duo system, and I might even be able to upgrade the CPU in it, since it uses DDR3 RAM, and thus has a fairly modern chipset in it. It was my experiential hackintosh system, and it had horrible video update speed with the built-in Intel HD video...but with the upgraded card, it flew! I was able to play 1080p video on it, no problem! It has Mac OS X Sierra on it, so it's fairly current. Once I have a good backup of the Hard drive and it's configuration, I will allow it to do some updates...scary stuff kids! But, it would be nice to have a contemporary Mac up and running! I do have an old iMac, but it's in pieces, and it's an old Core2 Duo, with DDR2 memory. :-(

Now that I know that the video card I fixed will not blow up, or blow up the system I plugged it into, I can set up a more powerful system to start scanning my dad's slides.

So, tomorrow (later today?), I am going to see about getting the new power connector soldered on to the Apple 30" Cinema display, and then see if I have an amazing display, or something I can sell for parts.

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Soldering on...

2017-07-06T22:02:19Z

Well, my soldering iron arrived today! I set things up to solder an old video card that had a cap that had come off it...it wasn't soldered on well in the first place, and not being a through-hole type board, it was susceptible to being knocked off...not damage to the capacitor, though.

And my soldering was...crappy. I haven't soldered in years, and it was ugly...but functional. I didn't bridge the pads or anything like that (I checked), but it's not up to the standards I used to solder to. In retrospect, I should have cleaned the pads of the old solder with the solder wick before trying to reflow some new solder on them....

So that sucked up all of the spare money I had for this month...next month, I will pick up a soldering iron stand, and a "helping hands", you know, those things with alligator clips and such to hold things in place while you solder them.

I may try to do a review video of the kit I got.

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A personal update...

2017-07-05T03:53:29Z

After fighting with a number of Video NLE programs under Linux, and the only one that I liked seems to crash all the time, I have finally manage to find out why it was crashing. The program in question is Kdenlive. I initially installed it from the Linux Mint standard repository, and then had it crash on me a lot. Then again, it was a number of revisions out of date, and I couldn't get any support for it. So I installed the direct Kdenlive repository (aka PPA), and installed the latest stable version. That worked OK for a while...then started doing the same thing. So, I gave up on Kdenlive, and contemplated putting Windows back on my Primary Machine...

But then Linux Mint updated their KDE verison to 18.2, I had been on 18.1. So I did an in-place upgrade, then added the Kdenlive PPA, hoping that the newest versions of everything would work....and Nope. So I started doing some more research into the problem, and it turns out that one of the libraries that Kdenlive uses, FFmpeg, has to be up to a certain version...one higher than the one shipping with Mint...and have two other specific libraries linked in to FFmpeg...and so I added the relevent PPA, and installed the upgraded version...and TaDa! It now works reliably, even the GPU accelerated portions!

So my next project is to clean up the video that I shot at CAN-CON of Laurie Stewart's talk, and since I *finally* got permission to release that video from the ConCom of CAN-CON, I should have that ready for her in a week or so.

Yesterday, with help from Duncan, I was able to order a soldering iron so I can get started on a number of repair projects that have been waiting...It's not a *great* soldering, but it should be good enough for now. I mean, I would *love* to have a nice Hakko, or Weller soldering workstation...but the cheapest ones would eat up a large portion of my monthly food budget! So it's a soldering iron that is fairly cheap, which comes in a kit, including solder, and a number of other tools. I read and watched a lot of reviews of it, and it's fairly nice for what it cost, with a variable temperature setting and an on/off switch. It uses Hakko style tips, so replacing the tip should be no problem.

I also got some solder wick, and one of those snazzy refillable flux pens. It will be interesting blowing the cobwebs off my soldering skills, which used to be pretty good. And I should become much better quickly due to having watched a number of soldering videos on YouTube, and knowing that I have ADHD, and thus should be a little less hyper these days. :-)

I have at least three projects that need bloated capacitors replaced, and with any luck, that is all they need. Plus a power supply connector that needs to be soldered, and a USB connector on a cell phone.

Finally, I filled the tires on my bicycle, and next I will grease up the chain so that I can start getting out on my bike, and getting some decent exercise again!

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Pro Tip:

2017-06-13T03:09:08Z

Any salad can become a Caesar Salad if you add enough knives!

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Pro Tip:

2017-04-26T00:50:45Z

"Foolish Mortals" is a gender-neutral form of address.

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