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[jwhouk]

That last part isn't a suggested item to do. At least, not from our orientation manual. 

[GarandMarine]

GM, if you ever make it to the general vicinity of San Francisco, I got you on some guitar basics. It is so much easier than it sounds, and literally the hardest part about it is learning how stumming complex rhythms works.

I used to play guitar (poorly) actually, got my hand smashed and never got around to learning how to play goofy.

[ev4n]

Had an optomostrist appointment this morning.  Got the drops where they dilate your pupils.

Showed up to work with sunglasses on, and have been complaining about bright lights all day.....

[jwhouk]

Methinks we need  a "whine" thread for stuff like that.

[Patrick]

GM, if you ever make it to the general vicinity of San Francisco, I got you on some guitar basics. It is so much easier than it sounds, and literally the hardest part about it is learning how stumming complex rhythms works.

I used to play guitar (poorly) actually, got my hand smashed and never got around to learning how to play goofy.

The offer absolutely still stands. The best thing about teaching lefties is that all they have to do is perfectly mirror what my hand is doing, instead of having to flip it around in their minds.

[jwhouk]

Of course, if you have issues with one hand, it might be difficult to learn to play guitar, period.

I've often wondered if I'd be better off playing left handed, because of the dexterity needed to play chords.

[Welu]

When my brother attempted to teach me bass, my instinct was to hold it left-handed.

I've tried on and off over the years to teach myself piano with little luck. I blame it on never getting the hang of reading sheet music but I think it is just lack of commitment.

Edit: Discovered some news earlier about a certain person I used to know and it fills me with Schadenfreude.

[jwhouk]

I was doing fine until some schmuck stole my guitar from our storage area at our first apartment in Waukesha.

Granted, it was a crappy old Harmony electric six-string, and the neck was slightly warped, which meant constant tuning, but I had every intention of trying to keep up on learning to play.

[Aimless]

Of course, if you have issues with one hand, it might be difficult to learn to play guitar, period.

I've often wondered if I'd be better off playing left handed, because of the dexterity needed to play chords.

I dunno, I'm very right-handed, at least as much as most other people anyway, but found that it's not that difficult to develop dexterity and strength in my left hand well enough to work on a fretboard. I found it extremely difficult to pluck with my left hand right from the start and above all I couldn't get the strumming to work well.

GM, Welu, maybe you can give this guy some competition

Otherwise pick up a small crappy ukulele and go nuts there's a lot of instructional material out there, it's fairly easy to get to a point where you can plonk out something that sounds nice and feels fun to play, and you can start making music almost anywhere.

[Patrick]

I was doing fine until some schmuck stole my guitar from our storage area at our first apartment in Waukesha.

Granted, it was a crappy old Harmony electric six-string, and the neck was slightly warped, which meant constant tuning, but I had every intention of trying to keep up on learning to play.

You bite your filthy tongue. Harmony guitars are not crappy unless they've been neglected, abused, or poorly maintained.

[Asterus]

Ohgod, why did I decide to do NaNoWriMo, why am I so far behind, and why do I keep going? I'm only 10kout 2 days from the end, at the expense of most of my hobbies and free time for this month! XD

[Barmymoo]

Because now you have the start of a novel which you can carry on writing at a more sensible pace!

Last night I attended the AGM for the community cooperative shop where I volunteer and somehow got myself elected vice chair and treasurer. Oops.

[GarandMarine]

I need to get back around to writing my Lovecraftian horror novel.

[Thrillho]

What is NaNoWriMo??

[Akima]

IGTFY. 

[jwhouk]

You bite your filthy tongue. Harmony guitars are not crappy unless they've been neglected, abused, or poorly maintained.

...That was kinda the reason why it was crappy. When I purchased it second-hand (about 20-23 years ago), it hadn't been well maintained.

It was during my first set of lessons with a buddy who taught guitar that we discovered the issue with the neck.

[Thrillho]

IGTFY. 

I know that Google is an available virtually limitless resource, but I'm also interested in people's explanations of things. Sometimes I much prefer asking the question to just Googling what it is.

[Welu]

Gareth, you explained something I've been trying to put into words for ages. I could only get as far as, "LMGTFY makes me feel like a stupid twat for asking a question."

[Thrillho]

I'd much rather hear a person explain what something is and what it means to them than look up a dictionary definition, and if my curiosity is piqued I look up the background facts too.

[ev4n]

As someone who has had to answer hundreds of "what's that?" style questions to precocious 5 year olds in my time, I think I'm ok with using lmgtfy in simple cases like that.  Now, if you want to know MORE about NaNoWriMo, that seems fair game to ask.

[Asterus]

My explanation: It's the result of writers all across the nation getting bored and decided to make and participate in a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over the month of November. Unfortunately, when my creative writing club decided to to encourage participation, I didn't take into account the fact that November is about time for the second round of exams for college courses. And I'm too stubborn and apparenlty a masochist to actually give up. Somehow, I'm now at 42,000 words with 2 days to do XD (I was at 29,000 when I woke up yesterday.)

[Thrillho]

As someone who has had to answer hundreds of "what's that?" style questions to precocious 5 year olds in my time, I think I'm ok with using lmgtfy in simple cases like that.

I'm pretty sure I can provide better conversation than the majority of precocious 5 year olds. I just happen to prefer actual human interaction, even via the medium of the internet, to Googling encyclopedia entries like I spent the majority of my immensely fucking depressing teens doing.

[GarandMarine]

NaNoWriMo is a fantastic idea... at the worst possible time of the year for ANY ONE.

[Patrick]

my incredibly promiscuous friend has decided to get a vasectomy about 6 months after his illegitimate son was born.

yep, sounds about right.

[Aimless]

First advent came with lots of fluffy snow while I was on call an unusually understaffed ER and the rest of the hospital was almost brought to its knees by a wobbly obnoxious loud stampede of extraordinarily drunk young men and women in various stages of distress ranging from worried to almost-dead. Saturday night right after payday, who'da thunk it. But I had just the right amount of work, there were mountains of delicious fika everywhere, I got to see a patient with a likely very weird diagnosis and was called to the stroke ward by nice people for emergency hanging-out-eating-yums. It's not often I like being on call saturday night but this was a good one.

my incredibly promiscuous friend has decided to get a vasectomy about 6 months after his illegitimate son was born.

yep, sounds about right.

If only he could get the vasectomy and then go back in time and kill his unvasectomised self before disaster strikes, or would that create a paradox?

[Barmymoo]

Patrick, this isn't directed at you but sparked by your statement. I really don't like the word "illegitimate". Why do parents have to be married for a baby to be "legitimate"? Stupid hang-over from a former age.

[Welu]

My brain jumped to, "Does he really refuse to wear a condom that much?"

Also agreed, May.

[Patrick]

Patrick, this isn't directed at you but sparked by your statement. I really don't like the word "illegitimate". Why do parents have to be married for a baby to be "legitimate"? Stupid hang-over from a former age.

I agree, but their unmarried conception isn't what makes the phrase relevant. They were going through a breakup after being together over 2 years, and she stopped taking her BC without telling him anything about it, and they had plenty of makeup sex after their fights. When he refused to continue the relationship but made it clear he wanted to be in his child's life both emotionally and financially, she shut him out completely and sued for sole custody. Then she went around the whole town telling everyone what a terrible person he was, played up her own image with the "I'm a hardworking single mother" card, continues to forbid any kind of visitation, all kinds of petty bullshit. Like the kid's a trophy or something. If that ain't illegitimate, I don't know what is.

My brain jumped to, "Does he really refuse to wear a condom that much?"

When he's just playing the hookup game, he's very mindful of safe sex. Me calling him promiscuous was unfair in this situation, but I thought it was funny. I'm not a nice person :3

[Barmymoo]

That's why I said it wasn't directed at you! I was just following a chain of thought. And honestly, the fact that a child is being used as a pawn in their parents' arguments doesn't mean they're any less of a legitimate human being. Perhaps the mother isn't as legitimately a good parent - but the child isn't "not authorized by the law; not in accordance with accepted standards or rules".

[pwhodges]

As it happened, by coincidence today a visitor (my wife's PhD supervisor, on holiday from NZ) who is staying with us remarked in an appropriate context that calling a child legitimate or illegitimate is completely unacceptable these days.  So there might not be so much of a fight to have over it, May.

[Patrick]

That's why I said it wasn't directed at you! I was just following a chain of thought. And honestly, the fact that a child is being used as a pawn in their parents' arguments doesn't mean they're any less of a legitimate human being.

From the mother's perspective, I am genuinely curious as to whether or not she thinks of the child as a human being yet. I agree that the semantics make no sense in the original context, but unfortunately I think to her, the kid really is just a thing that she can use to hurt someone who she felt hurt by.

[BeoPuppy]

I celebrated my birthday in a five star hotel in Amsterdam. It was awesome. And I think that I'm now addicted to the five star treatment ...

I mean, they had Caol Ila 1999 signatory reserve on the drinks menu. We got a tour of the 15th century chapel and all other highlights of the hotel at 10 in the evening from the foods & beverages manager. They made a note so that my girlfriend got the tea she drank after her dinner with her breakfast. Her dinner was two desserts, server didn't bat an eye. Everything is: 'we'll take care of that' and 'yes, of course!'.

Amazing.

[Barmymoo]

Sounds nice! I'd like to have a meal like that just once.

I just permanently deleted my Facebook account after 11 months of it being deactivated. First, though, I downloaded all the photos I was tagged in, all my contacts' email addresses and all their birthdays. Hurrah!

[BeoPuppy]

Seems ... drastic?

[Barmymoo]

Well I haven't been using Facebook since January and I don't think I'll ever want to again, but it bothered me that all my data was still there to be sold. When someone told me that it was possible to delete it fully, I decided to do it - but I wanted to get all the info I might need in the future off it first. I'd been thinking "if I really need to contact someone I can just reactivate Facebook some day" so I'd never bothered getting email addresses, which is silly really.

My doorbell has rung twice in the last hour. On the basis that it won't be for me, and that I'm not actually meant to be here at this time on a Tuesday, and also that I'm in my pyjamas, I am not answering it.

[Loki]

It's a Facebook representative trying to convince you to go back.
Don't open.

[pwhodges]

(I just put a concert of Mozart here.)

[GarandMarine]

Part of a speech from Lt. Gen John Kelly, USMC relating an incident in Ramadi.

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.
 
Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.
 
The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.
 
They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.
 
The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.
 
A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.
 
Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.
 
When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.
 
The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.
 
I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.
 
All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”
 
What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”
 
“No sane man.”
 
“They saved us all.”
 
What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.
 
You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “… let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”
 
The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.
 
For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe…because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.
 
The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread should width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.
 
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.
Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty…into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kellys-speech-about-marines-in-ramadi-2013-6#ixzz2mWIjf4hc   

With this particular shred of hell bearing down on them, they stood their ground. Heck, they even leaned in.

That's what my family is to me.




S/F

Your local jarhead

[pwhodges]

Moderator Comment

The response to this has been split off and sent to Discuss!

[GarandMarine]

Might as well move the original post there too Hodges.

[Welu]

While I was in work someone pushed in the wing mirrors and pulled out the wipers of my car. Just pulled them forward, not off. I'm positive I know which little shits did it, because they were outside the shop and I know they don't like me, and while the act itself was not major, it worries me to think they thought it was okay to do that and the paranoid part of me worries they might do something else more malicious.

I'm guessing they chanced it because I couldn't park in the actual carpark of the shop but they might not know the CCTV doesn't reach where I was parked.

[Grognard]

*Betcha none of y'all have done THIS*
Thanks to my work, I've had the opportunity to sift/shovel/vac about 14# of black volcanic sand recently.
so what?
the point of origin.













the beaches of Iwo Jima.
Even found half a dozen pieces of shrapnel and part of a spent bullet.
I've never seen Marines get so suddenly Reverent.
I know WHY....
but really: DAMN.

[GarandMarine]

Damn. Don't suppose you can send me some, I already have a jar at the center of my alter but can always use more.

[jwhouk]

For those of you keeping score at  home:

Deer of Central Wisconsin - 1
JWH's Buick - 0

####ing thing ran in front of my car while I was driving to work. Swerved to avoid him, still nailed him with my side view mirror. Car caught the edge of the road, hit solid ice and started sliding a good 100 meters or so through the ditch. I thought I'd be able to recover, but I got too far down in the ditch, and the snow was too thick (and frozen).

A visit to the repair shop is coming tomorrow.

[pwhodges]

Might as well move the original post there too Hodges.

I did it that way because I felt this was still a valid blog:

That's what my family is to me.

[Akima]

For what it is worth, I agree, and I think you handled it perfectly.

[Barmymoo]

I just booked two tickets to a concert I don't know I'll be able to go to and don't have anyone to go with me.

I sure hope that those two difficulties sort themselves out in the next two months.

[GarandMarine]

For those of you keeping score at  home:

Deer of Central Wisconsin - 1
JWH's Buick - 0

####ing thing ran in front of my car while I was driving to work. Swerved to avoid him, still nailed him with my side view mirror. Car caught the edge of the road, hit solid ice and started sliding a good 100 meters or so through the ditch. I thought I'd be able to recover, but I got too far down in the ditch, and the snow was too thick (and frozen).

A visit to the repair shop is coming tomorrow.

Yikes! Glad you're okay!


Now a brief blog:

Ladies. and gentlemen who do this. I know kinda understand one fact of life common to many of you that is alien to me. Shaving one's legs is a fucking bear. Unfortunately for me I resemble a bear fuzz wise so shaving my left leg from the knee down is a lot of work (also apparently shaving made me whiter some how?) but yeah total props that's not fun to do at all.

[Loki]

Why only the left one?

[Lines]

Are you shaving for a tattoo?

Also, it will always be harder to shave established hair than stubble. Especially if it's thicker and has never been shaved.

___

I love how basically every school in the city is closed today, including several of the universities, but not the one I work at. (Got ice overnight and more in the way, hooray...) So I called off because fuck them that's why. Also I don't want to drive up and down steep fucking hills to go to work and then come home in freaking ice storms. (Cincinnati has 7 major hills, I live on top of one and work near another. It's not a fun drive in inclement weather and my commute is 30 min in normal weather/traffic.)

Also I hate my job (not the kids, but definitely my new co-teacher and the administration) and I plan on using the day to update my resume and start looking for other jobs. Yay!