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[Omega Entity]

Is there a security department? Maybe you could call them, and have them take care of it?

[Carl-E]

As I recall, Welu works in a smaller neighborhood shop.  A security guard's not that likely...

So, with all  this extra time on my hands, I'm going to try out for the local concert chorale.  My church choir director, who's on the board, is encouraging me to do so. 

I found a full time online teaching position.  I applied immediately.  Anyone ever hear of South University Online?  It sounds like most for-profit schools... pretty bad.  But hey, a full-time job!  Benefits!  Online (I don't have to move)! 

Appealed the rejection of back-dating unemployment benefits.  Which means there will be a hearing...   

There was someting else I wanted to say, but I'm too late and it's too tired...

[Jace]

Went over to the shop to work on my armor a bit, just need to put 4 grommets in the shoulders of the CoP for when I decide to wear my spaulders on the outside rather than pointed to my gambeson underneath my maille.
Also helped a bit with fitting a spangenhelm. Seriously fuck spangenhelms. Also also did some preliminary work on adding some rudimentary flutes/dart type things into my knee and elbow fans, did just the elbows but it really really breaks up the flatness and makes them look 100x better.
We also measured and drew a pattern for my new bascinet but didn't cut it out because we didn't feel like getting into that too much. Going to be tossing a nice shovel face klappvisor on it too.

Just need to make that, splinted greaves, and a new gorget that covers my collarbones and I can roll out in a sexy 14th century kit. My hilarious and dumb plan is to spend an evening walking around the bar strip on a friday or saturday night in my full kit so people have an interesting story to tell about their weekend.

[Patrick]

The boys and I made Troubador t-shirts, I got hired, I had my first day of work, and my second day is in 5 hours. I should go to bed, but that'd be breaking my streak for this week.

Show on Saturday, more shirt making tomorrow evening, god knows how I'm ever gonna get any sleep anymore ever but that's fine 'cause money and band

[Akima]

I found a full time online teaching position.  I applied immediately.  Anyone ever hear of South University Online?  It sounds like most for-profit schools... pretty bad.  But hey, a full-time job!  Benefits!  Online (I don't have to move)!

Yay! Best of luck!

I did not know what a spangenhelm was. Now I do. This forum and Google are educational.

[Welu]

As I recall, Welu works in a smaller neighborhood shop.  A security guard's not that likely...

I was feeling so down but being remembered on this forum brightened my day so much for some reason.

Good luck with job, chorale and hearing!

[Barmymoo]

It has been a rather mad week! Last weekend we were at Mounted War Games, an SCA event where we got rained on very thoroughly but enjoyed the campfire on Saturday night. For me it was a milestone because Edith and I drove down on Thursday, then I drove back alone to babysit and got myself back safely on Friday evening. My first time driving at night, and on my own for any distance, and it went totally fine. Monday we had a party which Redball came to, and a bunch of other people - not the girl from the cafe who I'd invited because we've seen each other a lot (she works most days when I'm in) but I didn't expect her to come really.

Tuesday and Wednesday Redball and I drove to Wisconsin on a wild goose chase and met Jwhouk, bought cheese, got diverted about four times by road construction, stayed with some friends of Edith, and ultimately did not achieve what we were aiming for - which was a prison visit (stupid paperwork) - but had fun.

Thursday I drove myself to south Indiana to visit a prison more successfully, and I spoke to a lot of people which was very useful for my paper (I have discovered that "dissertation" is a doctoral level term in the US, which might explain the difficulties I've been having) and also very interesting. They have a dog and cat rehabilitation programme, and they had a pile of puppies and four little 6-week old kittens! Playing with them was very academically relevant, honestly...

Today I drove to meet a psychologist who told me a little about her time working in a women's prison, and also totally unexpectedly arranged for me to talk to one of her patients who was incarcerated and lost custody of her children. It was fascinating to talk to her, and sadly her story confirmed what I already knew - that being in prison breaks families apart and is particularly hard for mothers - did you know that women incarcerated for over two years automatically lose parental rights in many states, whilst men do not?

Anyway now I'm at Redball's house and we're off to a gathering later which Edith will meet me at and drive us home again, because frankly I have driven far too much this week! I was trying to work out exactly how far I've driven in the last two months - I'm thinking about a thousand miles. Until I got here, I had not driven a single mile as a licensed driver.

[Carl-E]

Welcome to America!  One of the requirements for citizenship is the ability to drive a thousand miles...   


Seriously, my parents live 500 miles east of us, my wife's live 500 miles west of us.  We drive a couple thousand miles every year...

[Omega Entity]

This spring and summer I drove an average of around 400 to 600 miles per week, From around the middle of March til the end of next week - and my area is actually the smallest of all the Field Coordinators of the nursery I work for. I will not miss this job, and I will not be taking the job next year, though the money was nice while it lasted.

[Akima]

did you know that women incarcerated for over two years automatically lose parental rights in many states, whilst men do not?

I didn't, but it does not surprise me in the least. 

[Is it cold in here?]

What's the difference between the Americans and the English?

The Americans believe a hundred years is a long time. The English believe a hundred miles is a long distance.

[Redball]

Tuesday and Wednesday Redball and I drove to Wisconsin on a wild goose chase and met Jwhouk, bought cheese, got diverted about four times by road construction, stayed with some friends of Edith, and ultimately did not achieve what we were aiming for - which was a prison visit (stupid paperwork) - but had fun.

Anyway now I'm at Redball's house and we're off to a gathering later which Edith will meet me at and drive us home again, because frankly I have driven far too much this week! I was trying to work out exactly how far I've driven in the last two months - I'm thinking about a thousand miles. Until I got here, I had not driven a single mile as a licensed driver.

It was a pleasure to make a road trip with someone intelligent to talk to for the first time in a couple of years, a pleasure to see May endure a setback with grace and some laughter and later to acknowledge an Epiphany of Adulthood in all that she was accomplishing. And I think if I'd known how little she'd driven, I'd have put her behind the wheel much sooner, but with more trepidation. And meeting with JWHouk was like a pilgrimage.

[Jace]

I have decided I don't care about passing my courses this semester. I bought Civ V last night.

[Alex C]

Civ V, huh?

Your grades should be fine.

[Alex C]

I've come to realize that the only times I de-lurk here is to either shit on republicans or civ v.

[Jace]

No man, I'm a sucker for kingdom building and civ games. Like I know you can win Age of Empires games in like 45 minutes but most of mine lasted 3+ hours

[Alex C]

Plus, tbh, I've never played it with the xpac either, so maybe after that level of patching the game is less terrible.

[The Seldom Killer]

I was trying to work out exactly how far I've driven in the last two months - I'm thinking about a thousand miles. Until I got here, I had not driven a single mile as a licensed driver.

I passed my test at the age of twenty and before I had a chance to get a car I had moved to London where such things are a fundamentally futile waste of money so I didn't drive. I borrowed my parents car a couple of times whilst in the country and drove a grand total of maybe 30 miles over a total of two hours. After which, I moved to Toronto, where once again a car was not an economically wise option. I did take a few further lessons to familiarise myself with driving on the other side of the road but gave up when I decided it wasn't worth getting a licence in Canada.
Finally my father came to visit me and we went for a road trip around New England and the Maritime provinces. My first serious driving since becoming licensed. I was very glad to have an experienced driver with me for a little refresher guidance. I then didn't drive again for at least another three years.
Finally, I was pressed into service driving a rental van for a friend who needed to move. This was in central London. Needless to say the experience was horrifiying. Alas, unlike other drivers with years of experience, I demonstrated an uncanny ability to not crash the rental van and thus wash out the deposit and so became the default driver for all house movings. It's not a welcome accolade so I can only advise that it is imperative that should this service be thrust on you, crash the van as soon as possible.

[pwhodges]

One of my experiences with driving a van for moving was taking it into the underground car-park of an apartment block.  We had to let the tyres nearly down to unjam it from the ceiling, but the rental people didn't check up there for any damage.

[pwhodges]

In other news, tomorrow I fly to LA for the start of a coach tour round the West that my wife has bought us:  LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Las Vegas, Sierra Nevada, Yosemite, SF.  This is a fully organised tour, which is why I've not attempted to arrange any meet-ups.  There are just two free days, one in Las Vegas (18 Sept) and one in SF (22 Sept, morning of 23 Sept).

It's the third time I've been to America, but both other visits were a week in Manhattan, so this will be entirely new to me.  My wife has also been twice before, once to Manhattan and once to Chicago (which she also liked very much).

[celticgeek]

And welcome to the Wild, Wild West, Paul.

Enjoy your stay!

[Patrick]

PMing you with my number for when you're near SF, Paul. I'd really like to meet you if you have the time!

[Spike]

Yosemite has been having a bit of a problem with the Hunta virus recently.  If you're not staying in their cabins it shouldn't be a problem.

[Patrick]

Matt and I drank too much at our gig in Oakland last night, because the power went out for a whole hour. I shouldn't have driven home (I feel horrible about it and am never doing that again, that's fucked up and I really kinda hate myself for it today), and we played our set horribly; once the first few mistakes were made, we all just lost heart and gave up. But we sold enough shirts to make $32, and we were still the best band there until our buddies Loudtalkers played afterward. Which we had to miss, because Matt had to work heeeeellla early this morning. Last night sucked ass.

Today I learned that one of my musician friends (who I kinda have a crush on but whatever) is into airplanes, so I asked her if she'd go with me to Fleet Week in SF next month. She said yes. I'm super stoked, first we're gonna busk downtown and make some bank, and then I get to go watch airplanes fly around with a super cute girl who won't lose interest in the airshow after the first 15 minutes. We're gonna see the Blue Angels! Yayyyy

[BeoPuppy]

There is something uniquely disturbing about two children crying ceaselessly. You can now guess how my day is going.

[pwhodges]

On a plane ... for the next 13 hours, I think.

[Lines]

They have a dog and cat rehabilitation programme, and they had a pile of puppies and four little 6-week old kittens! Playing with them was very academically relevant, honestly...

AAHHH!!!! That is the best kind of academic research!

So this is day...3 without my laptop. Honestly I think I fared ok over the weekend with just my phone and borrowing my boyfriend's tablet for online homework, but coming back to work without my own computer sucks. They updated all of the computers in the lab EXCEPT the one that I'm supposed to use, so XP is running rather slow since it's all, "WTF, I should be Win 7, why can't I be Win 7." Also having actually used a tablet for more than 10 seconds, I can honestly say I don't really like them. I now see the appeal for e-readers, but tablets not so much. Typing on them is a pain in the ass. Especially when you have to do a stupid post for an online class that's about 3 paragraphs long. Bah.

Also it's weird because I feel so disconnected from school. It's hard to check my uni email (I can't set it up on my phone, for whatever stupid reason) and BlackBoard is a little too complicated to run on it (the only time a website has been suuuuuper slow). I mean, if this were last year, I'd probably freak out, which I did on Friday when my computer shut down, but the more time that's passed, the less I care. I'm still doing homework...just slower. Which probably isn't good, but I don't care... Oh well. I'll get my computer back later this week, hopefully, even though the Apple repair place never called me to tell me what's actually wrong with it. (The genius dude said it was a short somewhere between the power button and the motherboard. He saw no liquid damage from the soda that exploded on it, though, so I guess that's good.)

[Omega Entity]

As for the tablets, their functionality goes up a lot if you can get a bluetooth keyboard and a stand for them. I know they're expensive, but you can find them ridiculously cheap if you know where to look - I paid $20 (including shipping) for my Logitec one, from 1saleaday.com.

[Lines]

I honestly don't need one, though. Between a smartphone and a laptop, it's redundant. It's a decent backup in situations like this, but these situations are rare and I can't justify the money.

[Omega Entity]

Honestly, it depends on how fancy you want it - there's a whole range of prices and models out there. My mom uses a Big Lots $100 special while I have a $250 Google Nexus 7, both in the 7" format. If you want to spend a hell of a lot more, there's always Apple.

[pwhodges]

Hello LA!

[Redball]

Looks like LA is having some friendly weather. Long as nothing's shaking or burning. Tell us if anything's shaking.

[Lines]

Hope you have fun, Paul!

Honestly, it depends on how fancy you want it - there's a whole range of prices and models out there. My mom uses a Big Lots $100 special while I have a $250 Google Nexus 7, both in the 7" format. If you want to spend a hell of a lot more, there's always Apple.

I've messed with iPads and the boy has a good Droid version, but I still don't like them or want one of my own.

[Omega Entity]

Fair enough. I've decided mine will be handy if/when I'm sharing a motel room with my brother for jewelry shows. He can use my laptop to skype with his family, and I can use my tablet to do forums and internet while he ties up my machine 

[pwhodges]

If you want to spend a hell of a lot more, there's always Apple.

A while ago my wife got an iPad and an Asus Android tablet for evaluation in her dept. The Asus always got returned; the Apple always needed to be reclaimed.

[Omega Entity]

Eh, I like my android.

[Welu]

I've been debating with myself and my boyfriend about getting some kind of Mac laptop or desktop for doing the media course. In the end the only software we can't get on a PC that would be handy is Final Cut Pro. Maya would be handy too but it can be got for PC.
Although the more we looked the more I can't bring myself to spend that amount of cash, even if we split the money. Especially when there are just as powerful and more for half the cost. Also there's just things I don't like about Apple, including the cost, which has led me to my unfortunate, pretentious realisation that I'm against buying their products in principle.

Although I hate spending money in general. Spent weeks debating spending £70 on an external harddrive that I need to get by in the course since my last one died. The Macs aren't connected to any kind of server so every year there's a race to piss on one first. I just work off my harddrive on any free one (half my last class dossed 90% of the time) and get pissed at the ones going, "THEY'RE ON MY COMPUTER! Might as well sit and sulk for the next two hours."

[Redball]

"Hackintosh" machines -- PCs running Mac OS 10, seem to have some capabilities. I don't know what's needed and what their limitations are. Any decent prices on used machines?

[Carl-E]

Back to blogging;

I was accepted (welcomed, actually) into the chorale.  2nd tenor (first, as needed).  Then there was a three hour rehearsal.  The first concert this fall is with a local university gospel group, so it's mostly some very interesting (read: complex) spirituals. 


Some of which were arranged by our director.  Seriously, there's his name, right on published sheet music... (OK, I'm impressed.) 


And in an hour I'm off to go climb into our church's belltower to document the water damage.  Access is by an iron ladder set into the roof.  I'm pretty much the only one willing, young and small enough to do it. 

And yes, my insurance ran out last week.   

[Lines]

Having used both Mac and Windows machines for media work, I don't know what it is, but Macs are just better suited for media and graphics. Yeah, they are more expensive, but if you see yourself doing a lot of media work in the future, they are worth it. And if you want to work in the business, you are going to have to work with them anyways, from what I've heard from all of the people I know in graphic and digital design. I don't really give a crap about most of their other products and the company is EH, but I do really like their computers.

In blog related news, I can pick up my laptop after class! I never got a call explaining what needed to be fixed, so I called this morning all, "Please don't tell me you lost it," and they were like, "Hey actually it's fixed, you can has now!" I have learned today that being unplugged from classes is a bad bad thing because I missed some important emails yesterday from my uni email. Whoops.

[Lupercal]

It seems the office I'm working in at the moment would rather use cheaper high-spec Windows 7 Professional Dells than splurge on Macs. I'm techinically doing "graphic design" - I spend a lot of time in Photoshop and InDesign, but it doesn't seem too RAM heavy. Or doesn't when InDesign isn't crashing constantly (how does the format of the Word Document you're importing make a difference, Adobe? Please become functional with something older than Office 2003 docs plz)

As for tablets - the cheap wars are on the horizon. Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 and now the rumoured iPad Mini are all battling the sub £200 market. Kindle Fires look pretty cool but I do already have a normal Kindle. The only reason I'd get a tablet is for the hour + long train commute twice a day, so it would be nice to do some work/fun crap on one. I've thought about a phone/tablet combo deal, but you know, screw paying £30 a month with limited data allowance.

[Akima]

I'm not a big fan of Apple's pricey hardware or control-freaky tendencies, but I like OS/X a lot, and the "Apple premium" is literally the price you pay, unless you are willing to go the Hackingtosh route, which is really only cheaper if you don't factor in the cost of your time and frustration, and became even more of a pain with Apple's changes in distribution policy in recent years. I hack around in the innards of operating systems and networks for a living, and when I want to do it at home too, I'd rather use one of the Linux or *nix distributions, and do it legally. For my daily personal computing needs, when I just want the thing to work, Apple gets my dollars.

There are reasons why Apple can get away with charging what they do, and they don't all have to do with fashion or fanboyism. The company does some things very well*, and you just have to decide how important they are to you. Mobile phones are not important enough to me to pay the Apple premium so I own an Android phone, but my personal computing needs are important enough for me to shell out for a Mac.

*Apple does some things incredibly badly too. Like its mice, for example. Apple mice are basically shit, and it really is ridiculous that a company full of clever people, who obviously put a lot of thought into human-factors design in other products, produce mice that work worse than cheap stuff from Logitech.

[pwhodges]

I can see a clipper (old  sailing ship) from my hotel room in San Diego.

[Redball]

Is it under sail? Picture?

[bainidhe_dub]

I'm trying to convince my husband that we should redo the kitchen from this:

to this:

It wouldn't be all that hard... We're already looking for a new above-stove microwave and the drawer pulls have been sitting in a drawer for like a year. Painting cabinets doesn't look all that complex. So really the only thing is the floors, which right now are these old peel-and-stick vinyl tiles that were put down straight over the previous vinyl, and are starting to stop sticking, but it's also not that big of a space (not that big of a house) so we'd just have to decide to save up and do it.
And isn't it SO much prettier? He thinks black cabinets would make it feel too small. I think two microwaves makes it feel too small. Plus in the current arrangement it's a pain in the ass to do dishes.

[Jace]

Putting in the faux wood flooring is stupidly easy and can totally be done in an afternoon

[bainidhe_dub]

Exactly. Though I think we should really take off at least one of the two (or more? who knows! my house is a mystery.) layers of flooring already down. And that would be a bit of a pain, but it was really hard to remove the old dishwasher when it broke because they had just tiled up to the feet and blocked it in.

[Lines]

Yeah, my mom ripped up the linoleum in one of the bathrooms and there were 3 layers of it. I would at least rip up all but the bottom layer, especially since even faux wood flooring is thicker than linoleum.

[Papersatan]

Yeah, watch out for the thickness.  The  previous owners of the rental house my parents bought put in laminate flooring.  In the one apartment it raised the height of the floor enough that the door to the basement only opened half way and the one to the side porch wouldn't open at all.

[Jace]

Oh, yeah, rip out as many of the layers of flooring as you can.