Comments

  7. Great American Satan says

    I chickened out too, tho my mug appeared briefly amid motion blur and bleary lights.

  11. wzrd1 says

    Dammit! BUt, I missed it.
    Was laying/sitting on the sofa enjoying my Tivo recordings of Dr Who and a couple of DC comics series, while feeling increasingly miserable from a cold that is rapidly entrenching itself.

    Oh, to be pedantic, it’s not a YouTube meeting, it’s a Google Plus hangout and I installed the software for future usage on this Linux machine.
    It’s the only remaining OS in the house, since the burglary that claimed my MacBook Pro and honestly, the last double handful of years offerings aren’t very tempting to me. Too much turning a powerhouse notebook into a MacBook Air, with a couple of bells and whistles.
    Our singular Windows device, a tablet (Asus Transformer) was also stolen.
    As other items, which were in very specific, cluttered and otherwise obscure locations were stolen, we know that it was one of our previous guests, who are banned from the property, due to other disrespect of property, goods and overall behavior.
    Two such individuals required a reinforced warning to not enter our property, which actually required an open display of arms – in a castle doctrine state and a reminder of that doctrine. I felt dirty afterwards.
    Normal people respect a gentle warning, abnormal people require a stern warning, only idiots and criminals require a threat and I’m quite good at reaching anyone close to normal, within the behavioral spectrum.

    The extreme response was due to one offender managing to roofie both myself and my wife, stealing both of our pain medications and raping my wife, while I was unconscious next to her in our bed.
    Yes, there will be a reprisal, in time. I refuse to permit the violence of others to control me, what I’ll ensure is justice.
    My wife, after three days of withdrawal symptoms, recovered and suffered extreme pain, until her doctor’s appointment, explanation and reissue of her RX.
    I had no withdrawal, despite four months on hydrocodone, but significant pain for two weeks until the pharmacist was comfortable in filling my RX.
    So, I’m angry first over the violation of my wife by a trusted guest, second, over theft of property and medications (dishes and silverware were stolen), third, my wife’s pain from both withdrawal and lack of treatment for her entire cervical disc region failure *and* a severe failure, with advanced cauda equina syndrome and finally, my inconvenience of pain.
    For further background, in the past six months, nine houses were broken into, frequently, while the resident was home. In on instance, a man with limited income, lost his children’s Christmas presents to the burglar.
    I permitted anger to control me once, the results of which haunt my dreams to this day. I returned to channeling that anger and utilizing it as its own reinforcing weapon, properly guided.
    That was something that leaders with one through four stars worth of rank worn stated, “I’m glad that you’re on *our* side”.
    While ignoring our capture and release bit, after we learned of torture being used on prisoners.

    Please excuse my meandering, but I’d like people to understand where I’m “coming from” and I’m also a bit challenged by this damnable cold.
    Hence, I’m a bit distracted.

    Pity, when the missed e-mail notification was sent, I was in a much better condition. Zero fever, mild nasal congestion, mild nausea, diarrhea was light.
    I suspect that the hangout would’ve been far more fun than the canned entertainment that I viewed.

    Oh well, Yappy Hew Near! Or something.
    Just another day here, gotta do that work thing in the morning, Eastern time, due to my HQ being Eastern, while our “shop” is 24/7/365.
    Which is something neither of us, my wife or myself mind. That gives us floating holidays, which have a *really* wide scope, such as an entire year and giving me a week and a *lot* of change off and not impacting additive vacation time.

    But, considering my career, currently (I’ve had a *lot* of careers over my five decades and a half of life, all rapidly resulting in my becoming an SME in the career), I’ll yet again regale all with the latest declassified report. One surprising, as most of the indicators and methods were ranging from Secret through Top Secret.
    The PDF has the narrative, the other documents, useful for screening for malware.
    A hint, the .pdf is the wordy report, the other documents, useful to protect a network or enterprise.
    https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity
    Oddly, the GOP can’t quite figure out that complicated English, perhaps, it’s due to words longer than five characters.
    Or maybe, it can’t fit inside of Dumb Donald’s twaddle…

  12. says

    One surprising, as most of the indicators and methods were ranging from Secret through Top Secret.
    The PDF has the narrative, the other documents, useful for screening for malware.

    Nothing in there is even interesting, let alone secret or top secret. The JAR is one of the weakest puff-jobs I’ve seen in all the years I’ve worked security. If that impressed you, your bar is set very low.

  13. Reginald Selkirk says

    I met someone recently who’s giving off a serious crazy ex-girlfriend vibe. Is it acceptable to just skip the girlfriend stage and go straight to ex?

  14. Garcia says

    After almost a year of trying to log in unsuccessfully. I was finally able to join in the blog. I found that PZ was online and attempted to join the video conference and found I needed a special doohickey for that. So downloaded it and still could not join conversation. It was a pity because I had so much to add to the conversation that seemed to be stalling. Oh well. I hope PZ you do it again. Maybe I will have better luck. Meanwhile I am happy to post again on this site. It has been well over a year, maybe even two years. During that time I still managed to come here and at least read the posts. Pharyngulal has always been on my top ten sites to go to when I need a reality check. Happy New Year!

  15. PDX_Greg says

    I would have loved to participate in the live feed. Hope to see another in the future!