Haha…something sickened her obviously!

Thanks for the 'grats!

I have a full time job too though…just need a little boost for awhile in the bucks.

Congrats banes!

And finally a Skull for Skulbie! ^_^

I'm flying off to Europe tomorrow night for my month long sojourn…
So you guys better be good stewards of this place!!!!
I expect you to be nice and busy in the forums while I'm away and not looking over your shoulders being a crotechety old dick!
^____^

Good journey, 'Zone! Have fun, come back safe!

I really like your new avatar Skullbie. Shocking and stark.

And another one from the “When you thought your're wrong file” I decided to take a vacation day for my mom's birthday only to discover I don't have any. Seems they count the hours from January until October and not a full calendar year. You can't have a single week without 40 hours during all that time. I missed it by a handful of hours. Just like the Army would routinely screw reservists out of veteran status by shorting deployments of one or two days.

Have fun, Ozone. Hopefully your migranes go away after your vacation. :)

Inspired by the most recent Quackcast on Kuller, I have designed a new flag for all Canadians who like to spell “COLOR” and for all Americans who like to spell “COLOUR”. This also applies to HONOR/HONOUR, FAVORITE/FAVOURITE, and GRAY/GREY.


“You want to decorate that Maple Leaf with some stars and some stripes.”
-ozoneocean

This is a direct response from the cold open during the discussion with Banes on spelling preferences for certain words.

The English versus American spelling already has its own flag. But it doesn't have any Maple leaves because the whole phenomenon goes back to before there was any specific Canadian flag. The Cambridge flag of 1776, the flag of the United Colonies before independence when Americans still spelled color with a “u” Back when the Continental Congress extended an invite to their neighbors to the north.

Maybe screw the stars and throw a maple leaf in there.

Or we should all just hang loose, aloha.

Well, downloaded the Android SDK and other things I need to use with it. And slowly learning to program for Android tablets. It's not easy. Would've been easier when I was younger, though. Oh, well… better late than never, right?

Well I feel like a moron. I'd been excited all day to finally finish telltales walking dead finale, but the PSN store is down, i'm presuming because “hurr lets make our download only game available the same time madden 15 gets a midnight release!!!”.
Well whatever. The game is so linear i'm pretty sure I can pick a random lets play and just watch it, since none of your choices matter in telltale games.

What is up with all this ice bucket challenge nonsense?

An ice bucket is an important element in any cocktail enthusiasts armoury. I see no amusement in my ice bucket being snatched by a smirking wag who proceeds to ditch the contents over a (usually) female victim, forced to play along because it's “all in a good cause”.
Mix the lady a drink. That is what the bucket is for.

You know that saying: When it rains, it pours.? Well I believe it has been a constant drizzle since I woke up this morning, yet it is still sunny outside.

The Infiniti SUV (not mine) drove through the garage door and ended up dragging it until it plowed through the drywall of the room behind it, damaging the house and all the furniture in that room. The reason was because of a mix up of the brake and gas pedal. It happened while I was asleep and it is surprising that I did not hear it as my room is right above the garage.

Obviously, the garage door needs to be replaced, as does the drywall connecting the garage to the house. Unfortunately the plumbing from upstairs was rammed into as well, so I will have to make adjustments.

Let me asses this situation:

The Good
-I can finally throw away all sorts of clutter and cardboard boxes that were packed in the garage because the “waste not” generation (born around the 1930s) has a very difficult time throwing anything away.
-the wall did not completely fall down so my room is still in one piece.
-No one died or was seriously hurt from the crash.

The Bad
-I was in the middle of doing my laundry and the dryer connector was also destroyed from the impact. So I have hung up all my clothes. If there is anything that living abroad in Portugal and Asia taught me is that many people around the world do not use dryers and hanging clothes is not the end of the world. I might have wrinkles in my shirts this month, but I will get over it.
-I have been in the process of moving the contents of the garage to the backyard and there is a lot of stuff. By stuff, I mean junk, of course. The good news is, it is a beautiful day out and not raining!
-The neighbors decided that today was the day to cover their whole lawn with manure so that cow poop smell has been wafting into my open window on this warm summer day.

@kawaii - Sheez, I'm glad you're all right! That sounds scary - I have a recurring, well, not a FEAR, exactly, but a recurring thought before going to sleep that a car might ram through the wall of my bedroom, or a plane might fall through the roof (my place is under the flight path to the airport so I hear planes regularly).

Second job is going okay. I haven't been a beginner at something in a long time. Actually that's not true; I have hobbies and I'm still a quasi-beginner at drawing and writing a comic and animation and so on.

But aside from a few stalwart readers, nobody's watching me do those things. It's interesting to be a beginner at this job.

The upshot (or is that “up side”?) is that the people seem quite cool so far. There's not that frenetic anxiety/immaturity/dickishness that can be common in certain types of businesses. So far so good!

I had my last day at my summer job on Friday. They didn't make a big deal about it this year because I'll be going back one day a week, but then my boss felt bad about it and promised to take me to lunch in a couple weeks. It's been a long couple of months at that job just because the work isn't very exciting, but I'm grateful that almost everyone I work with is pleasant and helpful. My boss in particular is pretty great; he doesn't much care what I'm up to as long as my work gets done, which makes my life a lot easier. I've had hover-bosses before and I don't think they're everhelpful. He also sings in his cubicle sometimes when he's in a particularly good mood. ^_^

Although I was in another department for a bit last week chatting with some other students and I was a bit jealous that I somehow landed in the only department with just a single student. They seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Also, I had really awesome ice cream today. It was half a fresh, delicious pineapple filled with ice cream (I was sharing with others!), with the contents of the fruit scooped out and mixed in with the ice cream and other fruits. So good. They had a cantelope one which I think I'll have to try one day.

I've been having a rough time lately. I'm going to try to keep this from interfering with the awards. The entire summer, my husband was unsucessful at finding a teaching position in our area. Three weeks ago, in a surge of despiration, he started looking further out. Almost immediately a school district snapped him up.

However, this district that he got a job in, is a 5 hour drive away from home. He will be living away for a year. Since I have a job here, I haven't decided if I will be taking a job out there to join him, or just wait.

Either way it has been rough adapting to this since we haven't been separated long term ever. We went to school together and to college in the same town before getting married. Our longest sepparation was a week. (the week before we were married).

Ow… That's gotta hurt. I hope it's not something that will test your marriage too much…

So trying to upload some Firefall videos to Youtube. I figure “why not?”… right?

Uploads take so long, and when it's done there's the chance that the audio will be out of sync. It's quite the headache…

Gotta love elections. We have a former governor who is running for office again. Two terms wasn't enough for this guy. He's also full of controversy. For the election we had a few days ago he's raising a stink this time because of 20 misprinted ballots… out of thousands.

He's also been accused of winning the governorship before by using “dead people ballots”, having people double vote for him, etc… It doesn't help that at that time the government was overspending quite a bit and that it took up to four years to get your tax refunds. It doesn't help that his campaign is one that inspires fear and uses misinformation. For example… he claims the current governor passed a law that will raise our mininmum wage up to $8.25 because HE said something about it. I never heard that guy say anything about raising the minimum wage until he said that…

So it looks like the current governor will win this next election. What he's done so far is to bring the government into the “black”… It's no longer overspending, but rather is paying off debt. Tax refunds are being paid on time, there's more police on the streets… I guess running the government like a business does work (he was a businessman before becoming governor).

Niccea wrote:
Either way it has been rough adapting to this since we haven't been separated long term ever. We went to school together and to college in the same town before getting married. Our longest sepparation was a week. (the week before we were married).

Me and my wife were seperated for a year when I first moved to London. We weren't married then - only been together 3 years at the time, but we didn't have social networking or phones you could carry about without a seperate handcart in those days. Very tough.

My best advice would be to use those mod cons for all their worth and use the inevitable extra time to do something you always wanted to do but never had the time. Think how much your relationship will be enhanced in a years time when he discovers you're now a captivating flamenco dancer, for example.

I'm running a fever. First time in a long time. I felt so bad I actually called out of work. Of course that means I won't have the required number of hours to earn any days off next year but there was no way I was going to work considering I could barely navigate a room. Smacked my toe, face and knee going around the house as my head swum.

I've never had a huge problem getting interviews, but god, playing phone tag is more infuriating that some of those quizzes i see on online forms. I think I called six times for my last interview somehow just always missing the manager(got the job, but still) and now the same shit is happening with this new one. I get put on hold forever and then it just cuts off. WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME.
Whatever. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Guess i'll squeak squeak squeak til they pick up the goddamn phone.

Skullbie wrote:
Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Guess i'll squeak squeak squeak til they pick up the goddamn phone.

Great saying, i must borrow that!

—

Goddamn house is full of spiders. Always get one or two this time of year, but this is ridiculous. I thought the one crawling up my shirt was big until I took him outside and saw the critter on the step, waiting to come in.

Aye, they are out in force at the moment here in blightly. all oura are garden spiders, but big ones mind. MUTANT GARDEN SPIDERS FROM HELL!!!!

Not to worry old chaps, 'cause they keep away the triffids.

They are Triffachnids, with their massive webs stretching from every tree and bush. You can't step outside without getting caught in multiple webs - why can't they pick on someone their own size?
They do seem to get bigger every year. Maybe they're practising for they day when they really can wrap us up for later.

e: I killed the rant thread.

Ermergerd guys! WTF? No one has been posting much at all! Erk!
Get back in here!
I'm back. I'm buggared but I'm back
If no one is posting I will take up the slak and just fill the place like Jabba the Hut.

But not tonight because I am so tired… It's great to use a real keyboard again and not always a smartphone or tablet!

D: Sorry! I'm back at university now, which both keeps me very busy and makes my life very dull for anyone but me. Example rant: my South African History class which has tons of cute guys in it was cancelled this week…which I didn't find out until I had already been at school for two hours between classes.

We've also taken in a stray cat who was living in our yard for a couple of weeks. He's a lovely big guy with a grey mane and bright yellow eyes, so we've called him Dandy (short for Dandelion). We took him to the vet and had him checked out and gave him his shots and everything. He's staying in the porch until we get all the other animals a bit more used to him, so hopefully that goes well.

Welcome back Oz!
Tall travel tales please.

—

Hipster, me and my college friends adopted a stray cat and it turned out she was full of kittens. So many kittens we were evicted from our flat. I'm glad yours is a boy!
—

Nail biting times: Scotland could break from the UK today. That could be bad news for us.

There are so many public cats in Europe! I say public rather than stray because they seem to live as everyone's cats out in the open quite happily, fed by everyone, rasing their families in public and seem far greater than the amount of cats people own personally…
In places where there are a lot of those cats at least people seem to treat them as their pets rather than actually have a pet cat of their own.

Out of the places I spent time in Turkey has by far the most of these cats and the people are the friendliest and most tollerant of them. There don't seem to be any rules on pet ownerhip in houses or apartments or on taking animals with you onto public transport or into shops or whatever, which seems prety cool.

European cats that I saw were all very small, even the biggest, meanest tomcats were the size of juvenile cats in Australia… Un general they're prety dwarfish and very cute.

Most of them are freindly it seems, because people treat them well, putting food scraps out for them in the evenings, especially around food stalls and restraunts.
So that's the cats!

——————–

Bianka, aka Pinky, aka my travel compainion, was a bit of a trial.
When we had fun, we had fun, but our personalities and interests are so wildly different that we can't get on for much of the rest of the time. Sometimes I really wonder why we're even friends, but for some reason we still hang out anyway. I suppose it's like a brother and sister relationship- you can hate each other but you still feel a bond anyway and you still care about the other person.
Had some good times but I am very glad to be a long way away from her again.
—good stories maybe later. :)

I met Tantz in Athens and hat was very cool. I SO wish I could have stayed longer there!!!!!

Ironscarf wrote:

Nail biting times: Scotland could break from the UK today. That could be bad news for us.

I think it will be bad for us whatever is decided there is going to be bad blood betwen scotland and U.K. from now on.

You know more than there was before!

Call Me Tom wrote:
You know more than there was before!

I remember my dad telling me about a party he went to in Scotland years ago, celebrating some significant date. He had a wild night of singing and carrying on, they kept buying him more drinks and were generally the friendliest people on the planet.

After raising his glass for about the 20th time, my dad says “What is it we're actually toasting here?”, to which the reply came:
"Crossin' th' border at night an' slittin' th' throats ay th' English soldiers in their beds!"

That whole Scottish independance stuff is so strangley ironic since Scottland has done more to make the British Empire what it was than any other territory. The independance argument os just so amazingy superficial, based on manufactured nostalgia and misplaced nationalisim.

——

I have a nice little (or big) infection insode my nose. It's putting oreasure on my sinus and making me feel like shit. It cost me $100 for the antibiotics ($75 for the Dr apointment for the prescription and $25 for the actual pills). If I'd have followed Tantz Arein's advice I'd have had a nice pack of antibiotics over the counter for $4 Euro in Athens ready for just such exingincies as this. -_-

ozoneocean wrote:
The independance argument os just so amazingy superficial, based on manufactured nostalgia and misplaced nationalisim.

I just finished reading a great new biography of Queen Anne and the debate about the Act of Union three centuries ago was also amazingly superficial and based on manufactured nostalgia and misplaced nationalism. And it didn't hurt that Marlborough was creating some real national pride. Of course making Scotland part of a new nation so they'd stop slipping across the border and slitting the throats of English soliders because that army would increasingly become full of Scots. And make Scotland less likely to support the Stuart Pretender because they were now part of Great Britain with the Cross of St Andrew merged with the Cross of St. George into a really nice new flag.

Also saw the wonderful BBC miniseries the First Churchills.After reading the book I wanted to see those vicious fights between Lady Churchill and Queen Anne recreated and I wasn't disappointed. And people really knew how to dress circa 1670-1710.