Leaderboard

Got the job in Phoenix (with one of the Big Four accounting/auditing firms) I'd mentioned! 3 month paid internship at this point, but it is the goal of both them and me to turn this into a perm position I'll be leaving my parents' place in late January

So it has been an eventful week and a half. I was asked to speak at a conference in Orlando. This particular conference is a big deal in my weird little space. More interesting is that a colleague of mine, who used to hold my position, has been trying and failing to get a speaker slot at this conference for many years. Then I went to Vegas for my very first Big Tech Conference. I made a video about it. Also, I am back on twitter due to work stuff. The only positive is that I can reconnect more with WGBers @geographerjay

@InfinityCircuit wasn't feeling well, so she was recuperating, and thus didn't visit @heavyboots still came out, tho, so we had a mini-mini meat Visited this Mexican restaurant IC had recommended, that coincidentally was very near my AirBNB in Mesa. We then visited the hiking trail at South Mountain for a bit. the BootsMobile: the mountain: the metroplex:

I guess I'll know at the very last day whether I've progressed to the paid, 3 month. It has been confirmed the paid 3-month would start in early 2020. (actually early Feb, but they're trying to get it pushed closer to New Year's so there is not as big a gap between the end of this eval, and the actual internship). And, if they like me at the internship, I would be hired on full-time immediately after the internship terminated.

Thanks HB! At 46, staying in with my better half was as much excitement I could take.

Oh wait, speak of the devil it looks like it is working now! Follow request sent!

I will do so, but the twitter for me is broken and does not show followers at present. I have emailed Twitter and I a sure their crack customer support teams are working on the problem now.

this is a pic from around 30 years ago. Me and my friend Laura grew up together. We first met in church at around age 3, and were lifelong friends. In 1993 or 4, Laura moved to Illinois to go to college, and I moved to Seattle. Laura died in 96 from "intestinal perforation". I've never been able to find out how that happens. How does someone's intestines get perforated? Anyway, I knew this girl for a long, long time, and miss her tremendously.

this is a video presentation my friend Marco, one of our photogs put together of his portraiture. There are quite a few of me in there..

I'm glad you're back, IC. I am always pretty open with her about sex. It is hard to hear that a boy on the bus called her a slut and a ho last week. She googled 'ho' because she didn't know it and then texted her mom to ask why he was calling her a gardening tool... Then she called him a jackass and reported him to the school and he got in trouble But I don't want her to learn about sex from misogynistic shitbags on the bus. I am not one of those weird guys that expects his daughter to be pure and chaste forever, I mean I started talking to her mom in large part because she wasn't either those things. I don't know what she is going to want as she gets older but I want her to be prepared to communicate what she wants to the people she is with at that time. I am not sure if that makes sense, but I'm just trying not to fuck this up too badly.

Still Defense contracting, though I've changed employers and jobs a few times since I was 'here' last. Today's fun involved finding out something didn't get sent out in a timely fashion because I was on vacation. Will be going through a contract change-over at the end of December. Though I signed the offer letter from the incoming company I am still hoping to stick with this one but the job slots are rather limited and require certificates I'm either completely uninterested in getting or am incapable of doing them any time soon. Sigh.

Been diving into a new fighting style - I hate to call it 'fencing' as it's a more... utilitarian style and originated around the 1350''s or so. Going through the manual, one play at a time, figuring out some drill designs so I can teach it: Iberian Swordplay - Domingo Luis Godinho's Art of Fencing. Also tore through some stuff on Kindle, particularly the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik by PKD, the 5th Gender by Gail Carriger, and the Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (which *has* to be a pseudonym).

Watchmen TV series. Not having seen any previews, I didn't know what to expect, at all, other than all new characters. I have always liked Regina King, and I love that this show takes place in the South with a mixed cast. I'm intruigued by how Rorschach's legacy has been co-opted by the racist group. It reminds me of how law enforcement (particularly Border Patrol, around here), has done the same with the Punisher. They have no idea what the character is about, but his mask/symbol sure is cool! I am looking forward to seeing more.

As many of you know, I had an idea for an expedition patch. After a brief amount of discussion on Twitter, we decided on a Screaming Fist patch. Fuldog and Sentinel400 came up with the design and I ordered it from a manufacturer. I still have a few patches to mail out and a few more that remain unallocated. If anyone wants one, please feel free to contact me.

Yay Xen0!!! Welcome to the Southwest!

A new variant on tentacle tights, lol…

Nice! Glad it's working out, Xeno!

Congrats!

Currently reading Shadows of the Short Days by Alexander Dan Vilhjalmsson having seen him on a panel at Gollanczfest. Icelandic dark fantasy, reminiscent of China Mieville. Also doing a re-read of Gibson in preparation for The Agency - started with The Peripheral then cycled back round to the beginning with Neuromancer and Count Zero. Next up, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Also been reading a lot of Christian/Miles Cameron historical/fantasy. I recommend The Masters and Mages series which has just completed.

I am pretty sure that white cross visible in second and second-from last photos is not something the Russians put on tanks. https://tacticalwargamer.com/articles/history/germanvehiclemarkings.htm

LOL I can see this same video for weightlifting. I think the rule is that if you're strong but fat and not interested in keeping a healthy diet you can call yourself a 'powerlifter'. Note that this strategy also works if you are a cute female software engineer that wants to post pics of yourself in your underwear after deadlifting or a middle aged office drone that takes every supplement ever made and buys a squat suit so you can brag about getting 500lbs ass to grass. Interesting that in this video the only cyclists are men.

OK, maybe second funniest.

Officially the funniest thing I've seen all day! 😹

Haha, yeah it was good meeting you Xeno! And hope you are feeling better, IC!

I was really bummed to cancel. I am just now able to have some soup- turns out I have more of a stomach bug than allergy problems, though, so it was wise of me to go home instead.

What's funny is I cultivated that psycho look into a weapon. I utilized the uncertainty so many times, it became an asset.

My colleagues at Studio N. Me not included. Me prefers behind lens places.

lol, that's Pete & Eric Nordstrom, and yeah, that rando chick is Katie Holmes. I was offered an LP position at the new store, but I like my photo studio.

We opened the first major department store in NYC in nearly a century today. Hope this works out for us....

If you guys do meet, LMK! Maybe I can get away from Life™ long enough to drive up and join in lol. I am actually planning a trip to PHX at some point to visit another friend and was kind of thinking I be able to drop by and say hi then, but still struggling to work out conflicting schedules weeks later so that might not even happen before the end of your trail period at the rate things are going…

Good luck with that, IC! We went through recompete last year and just finish the money fight union negotiations this year. Always a somewhat stressful time, yes.

(I see a lot has happened since I last visited the Board! My only advice is to encourage her to not let anyone shame her about her partners, preferences, or activity level. It may not keep people from having an undesirable opinion about her, but it will give her some resilience. Best of luck!)

Xeno, as I said on FB, the Phoenix metro area is just kind of a mess. Mesa/Gilbert/Chandler has gone through a serious suburban/rural 're-gooding,' as they force out the rural poor and turn their properties into the planned communities you see all around you (and some very fancy horse boarding facilities and charter schools, but which is which can be hard to tell sometimes). The area has also been a hotbed for Mormons for *ever*, and you know how they like things neat, clean and orderly.

@InfinityCircuit might come by in a few weekends (the weekend before I fly back to Seattle). Mini-meat time! It's not just the heat of PHX that gets to me, but a certain, I guess, culture shock? Which always sounds weird saying when you haven't left the country. (I've been to Michoacan in Mexico for a few weeks, too (this was years ago, before it became a battleground for drug cartels ), and of course there was the element of culture shock there, too, but) Really unhappy with the bus service, but I get that public transit isn't going to be a popular option for general commuters (but merely the poor) when it can get to 120F in the summer. (In Seattle, you have plenty of routes that office workers--people wealthy enough they surely have reliable cars--will take, but here, even on the train, it's mostly just poor/working class sorts). It sorta seems like this city/metroplex was built according to the whims of real estate agents. I mean, that's going to be a force in any city (including Seattle), but it feels especially strong in this place. I'm in Mesa, actually (a poor-ish part of Mesa), and really haven't even been to Phoenix proper, besides when I flew in and got on the commuter train.

I am planning on starting that this week. I absolutely LOVE the comic.

Star Trek Discovery - I tried, I really did. But the JJ Abrams themed series on CBS just falls flat for me. The overdone dialogue, weird lighting, and militaristic focus just isn't the Star Trek that I want to see. It isn't about exploration or becoming better people and talking through problems rather than shooting everything in sight. I am holding out hope for Picard, but I just don't know. At a certain point these franchises get so valuable that they seem to veer towards the lowest common denominator (see Star Wars, which teeter back and forth between well written space opera and absolute drivel).

Generally speaking it doesn’t rain hard for long 🤷‍♀️ If you’re hot in Phx in October...prob you have AC on so you’re not likely leaving windows open. I mean our house is solid but we occasionally will get rain under a door if it’s very rainy and windy from the right/wrong direction, and we will get rain through open windows. If the house you’re in seems like it’s been around for more than a year or two, you’re probably fine. Desert SW cred: we’re ~4 hours west of Phoenix.

lol.... Yeah, no. I've decided against it. Not so much the pepper spray, but the memories of knives and guns... ...and syringes.

UK cover!

Congrats, Xeno! I'm kinda envious of the location. I've had it with Seattle.... The only thing keeping me here now is my awesome job. I've been facilities coordinator at Studio N for about a year and a half now. Earned a 17% raise, bought a truck, moved into a real house for the first time since 1990. My manager has gone on an unplanned sabbatical to care for his mother in law. She developed hyper-rapid onset dementia, and they're still trying to figure out why. She was fine one day, then that night she was freaking out about all the people she thought was trying to kill her. Some dementia, some schizoid symptoms. So they had to move her in with them, as she needs 24 hour supervision. Having watched my own grandmother slowly succumb to the ravages of Alzheimer's, and watching an Aunt deteriorate from ALS, I know the sort of stressors my boss is weathering right now, and am doing my best to keep our studio out of his mind. This has given me a tremendous amount of OT, but has also forced me to step into a building manager role. I am doing great and making it look easy. but it is kinda exhausting. 5 more weeks to go....

Yeah. I'm honestly angry at how ineffectual I ended up being. Re: not even really being able to retrieve the body: if the dog had humans who were looking for it I was losing it like a crazy person when I saw that happening. Shouted "Oh my god!" the moment I saw it maimed, but still alive. Then, afterward, I just kept shouting "Fuck!" every few seconds.

Saw a dog get killed in the road. Fucking ruined my night It was fucking awful. I was walking back from the pharmacy, busy-as-fuck street, everyone going past at, like, 50 MPH. Here a *thump* up ahead, and I see the dog scrambling to get out of there: it had been hit, but was still alive but injured. Another car came along a moment later, hit the dog again, and killed the dog. It was a few 100 feet ahead. I got closest to where the body was (in the middle of the road). It was either a puppy, or a small breed ;_; I wanted to get the body out of the road, so at least it would not get mangled, but cars just kept fucking coming. FUck.