Well, as for myself there are many things going on this month. Hopefully if things go well this month will be better than the rest of the year has been.

First, my divorce hearing is scheduled for December 4. If there are no more delays I should be able to have my final custody hearing regarding my son, and with that out of the way my soon to be ex and I can sign the paperwork and get this divorce over with. I'm ready to move on with my life and put an end to this farce of a marriage.

Besides that I have a number of things planned dealing with the holidays. One of them is the Nashville Lights. By Nashville I am talking about a small town here in Ohio called Nashville Ohio not the Nashville in ?Tennessee known for country music. Nashville Ohio is known all over the world for its Christmas lights display which is amazing to see. Amazing because the farmers in the area string miles of lights and setup decorations in their fields such as statues of Santa, all the reign deer, Christmas statues of cartoon characters like Charley Brown and Snoopy, as well as inflatable snowmen, etc. Basically, there is a lot to see as it goes on and on for miles. Even though I personally can't see it I like to go anyway because I like to listen to the singing and Christmas music as well as have someone describe the display to me each year.

Besides that I may optionally go slay riding. I'm not sure how much that will cost but there are some farmers in the area who own slays and offer slay rides for a small fee. That's always fun, and that will depend on how much cash I have, weather or not I'll be getting my son for the holidays, and weather or not the temperature is not super cold this year.

In any case I've already put my tree up, and have decorated it. I picked up a Christmas train at the store a few days back and have put it under the tree where it goes around with little elves sawing logs, pounding on things, running little pumps, and it plays Christmas carols like Santa Clause is Coming to Town, Jingle Bells, and Deck the Halls.

So that is basically where I am so far as far as I know. I'll probably had more to this thread once I know more or do more this month.

I've meant to jump into one of these threads but college work has been piling up on me.When I've not been doing that I've been restoring an electric guitar, in this case a 1980 westbury  deluxe. These were very under rated at the time and now people are realizing there true value. This particular guitar was found languishing in the loft of the house that my friend moved into a couple of months ago. The poor thing was in quite a sorry state but I've just about got it back into playing condition.  I can't wait to play the thing tbh. How is everyone feeling about christmas shopping. Naturally I haven't even started mines and I'm not looking forward to it one bit.

Tward, I hope the custody hearing goes well. Courts unfairly lean towards the mother in many cases, and I hope you get the shot you deserve.

Dark, keep that heating going! It got into the negative temps here last year, and I can't imagine being in a house with absolutely no heat. We'd be making a blanket fort and cuddling up to the dogs for sure.

I love the winter. There's something about the growing darkness which can be depressing, but also comforting. As an adult, I feel like I spend the last weeks of the month trying to make a spark of Christmas magic, trying to make the holiday as beautiful as it was when I was little. Maybe my boyfriend's mom will wait for us to get there this year to put up the tree. Assembling the tree, candles burning, a Pandora Christmas station on in the background, and Mexican hot chocolate simmering away.

I've gotten involved in a church group. I'm not a religious person. I feel like I should defend that statement by saying it's a very liberal sort of place. It's house church, which means we don't have a building. We meet in members' homes, eat dinner, and discuss verses. What did it mean when it was written? What should it mean? Does it mean anything for us today? Do you think it's a bunch of BS? Ask questions. Challenge faith. Find your own meaning in the words.
I don't consider myself a Christian, but I am spiritual. I like to use it as a philosophy inner peace finding service. Anyway, we're bottling our home made communion wine next week and singing carrols. Everyone is bringing something to drink, and given how much alcohol we drink as a church...
Did I mention that part of the group is going on a brewery tour this Saturday? Haha, I love Jesus.

The community college where I tutor ends the semester on Friday. I'm glad of the break, because community college is a rough environment in which to teach. At the same time, I'll miss that paycheck. I'm still searching for a job with more than five sparatic hours per week.

So string up your Christmas lights. Get those Tardis ones from Thinkgeek. Open the cider, and put on some music.

What are some other people's favorite parts or traditions of the holiday season?

Hi,
@tward: ouch. no contact at all? That's just... ouch.
@sinamon: wow, I didn't know thinkgeek did Tardis lights. I'm wondering how much of their stuff has UK distributors such as amazon and such? I know a couple of products from there are on there, but I think thinkgeek need to give the sellers permission for some of the more exclusive items.

Hi Everyone,

I decided to visit the AudioGames forum after a day full of intense studying for my classes. This is just a short break. No procrastination here. lol
This topic caught my interest, and decided to write a little bit about how my life is going so far this year.
Firstly, I want to say I'm sorry to those who aren't having that great of a year. I sincerily hope things improve over time.
I can't believe we're approaching Christmas again. I am a big fan of the holiday season! Unfortunately, I live in Texas in the United States, and I am located in an area that hardly gets any winter season at all. Currently, the most that can be considered cold weather is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Not cold enough, right?
As for me, life is perfect! Well, almost.
I graduated high school, got hired by a company named Pearson as a programmer for one of their projects, started attending a university, adjusted nicely, and I'm scheduled to finish all of my final exams by December 11. Therefore, I will have a full month to myself. Although, my plans are to go with my parents to Mexico to visit some family. The "almost" stems from the fact that I am taking quite a bit of classes, and as a result, I have papers, projects, etc due by the class's corresponding final date. On the side, I'm recording an introductory podcast to the Raspberry Pi single board computer that I'm planning to send off to some of the blind tech podcast networks. Also, I recently finished watching Lost. I have to say, it was an interesting show.
Oh, I almost forgot, I attended the NFB national convention! Can you believe it? A friend and I decided that we wanted to go, planned everything ahead of time, and took off on a plane from Texas to Florida. An 18 year old and a 19 year old on an adventure without the parents. It was so fun!
In a nutshell, those are some of the major highlights of this year for me. Now off to study some more. Here I come Political Science!

@kaigoku, as it's dam freezing up hear at the moment I don't think lack of wintry weather is such a bad thing . glad 2014 hasn't been a total disaster for everyone.

Thanks Defender. It was one of these competitive music festivals judged by a woman who was from English national opera and a Leida expert. I didn't so much go to compete as i went just for the chance to sing stuff, actually i personally found some of her decisions a little odd and not the ones I would've expected, ---- not to do with me, but for example in the unaccompanied folk class she went on  about the necessity to maintain tone without accompanyment and then gave the third place award to a chap who was quite definitely off key in certain sections, she also gave one of the musical theatre awards to a girl who had a good voice, but really shouldn't have sung somewhere over the rainbow with full operatic vibrato and diction. That is one of the nice things about the Aims music school I go to, each class is taught by people who have a distinct interest in whichever style they are teaching, ---- indeed in the Musical Theatre class I've heard the tutor encourage people away from full operatic diction and tell people to focus on the worlds and emotion instead.

Still, as I said I was more there to just get the chance to perform, and it was rather nice to sing some different things in front of an audience with a propper pianist. I particularly liked doing Master of the House from les Miserables for my Music Theatre song, while there are lots of nice ballads I could've done, why god why from mis sigon, Music of the Night from Phantom etc, I knew everyone else would do those sorts of things so thought a commic song would be a nice change instead.

Sad to say I have come to realize the situation is worse than what Cinnamon stated. Yes, I was aware of the fact that in the large majority of cases family court sides with the mother in child custody cases, but I wasn't aware how discriminatory and prejudiced our court system is towards the blind. What I got was even less than what a normal middle aged white male would get in a similar case.

In short, my judgment was as follows. I can have supervised visitation of my son from 9 AM to 6 PM on the first and third Saturday of each month. I can have him for Christmas Eve, my birthday, and for Father's Day. All visits are to be supervised by a non-disabled adult such as one of my parents or a trusted friend of the family.

The reason I'm discouraged and upset by this judgment is that normally, were I not disabled, I would have a standard visitation from Friday night to Sunday night, every other holiday, and of course wouldn't require supervised visitations. It is obvious my blindness is being held against me and I am being discriminated against for my blindness.

I have of course been in contact with the National Federation for the Blind and the National Council for the Disabled and both agreed with me that the decision was discriminatory. Problem is it will take money to hire the right kind of attorneys to file motions on my behalf, I'll need to hire experts to testify on my behalf, and if I want any kind of standardized visitation I'll have to really fight for it because family courts are by and large prejudiced.  I found out by reading the documentation on their sites that what happened to me is quite common and basically I was ill prepared to fight a battle over my rights as a disabled person and fight my ex for custody at the same time. So as a result I got shafted.

Not to be a downer, but my Christmas holiday has just gone down the tubes as a result of that decision. All the things I had planned on doing, wanted to do, is no longer possible. I'm going to be spending most of the time alone with me, myself, and I. So I'm not sure what else to do this month given that my plans just went up in smoke.

Hell, rofl that might have been me, if it was Oregon, both my parents are almost totally blind and independent with guide dogs and canes and the works, a unique situation to be sure but yes, CPS tried to take me away from them on more than 1 occasion, and people wonder why the American sitizans still hate the government when it isn't a third world country...  But in a third world country you wouldn't even have this problem because if you had a blind baby you'd toss it in the nearest river and try again.
That's not exaduration either.

Really sorry Thomas, but at least you get to pick who watches instead of some asshole who's closely associated with the very places that think shit rulings like this make any sense at all.
From what I have heard, if this was the early 90's or before, you would not have gotten to see him at all, but that doesn't mean this isn't bull...

@Tom, I do hope things work out, now or later, it's a very shitty decision really. 

@Defender, interestingly enough, I found while reading anthropology for my doctorate some so called "third world" countries have pretty good attitudes towards disability. For example Al Salvador made governmental provision for disabled people earlier than a lot of western countries, because they had so many wars an revolutions they had a lot of wounded soldiers and so disabled people, whether soldiers or not got to be seen as quite heroic, it was even supposed to be quite a macho thing to see a disabled man getting on with his life.

similarly, in Zimbarbway one anthropologist foun that people had such a strong connection with their families that they treated disabled people as just a farely usual part of life, indeed the anthropologist said it was quite hard to gather data because people were too afraid of governmental interference and preferd to just have disabled members as a part of their communities.

when I studied different cultures beliefs and practices around disability, one thing that actually surprised me was just how bad people in the Uk and possibly the Us were, despite (or in some cases because of), legislation about disability discrimination. After all if someone making any bad decision about disability was able to say "I'm thinking this because of disability" and get the issue out into the open rather than make a biased decision but keep the motivation quiet, then things would be much easier. Which is better, to go for a job interview and be refused on any flimsy excuse because the interviewer has no idea about how blind people would do the job and just refuses as a matter of course, or to walk into an interview and the person to say "so how would you do this?" and have an honest discussion on the subject.

of course, what I say doesn't really matter anyway, we're a pretty shitty species all around and I confess right now I'm thinking the best thing that could happen for the human race would be a serious chunk of asteroid or maybe a super virus, ---- let the  ants have a go .

Yeah your right Dark there's certain countries that's true, especially war torn ones, with some seriously awesome people that make a big difference, but over all the outlook in places like that is simple, and shit for the baby in question,and shit for the child and then adult if they even get that far.

That said we have our own huge problems here, but generally crazy cases like this don't happen, as with most things, it's the bad ones you hear about, sure then you need to deal with run of the mill descrimination and assholery, but it's better than being denyed basic human rites like with that woman who, was not my mother by the way now that I know more about the story.

I guess what happened with us was less extreme and a bit later.

Also yeah, Thomas,look on the bright side, especially when it's true.

And, I for one think that sometimes the human race sucks, but getting into that mindset is just going to make you autohate everyone around you, so be careful, when I think of that I also think of the capability and potential that all humans have to do amazing things, and I think of some of those things, not just ones that stand out, but simple things too.

We have too much potential to be universally awesome to be written off so easily I think, or to deserve being written off.

Not all our instincts point us to immoral actions either, some of the base ones, but also some point us to neutral and even very moral things as well, otherwise how could the average person live in society, because messed up as it can be it's still better than nothing.

Well I also have my secret weapon, no idea why it works so well but I have to not have it too loud, or to quiet, and I have to have good headphones, and I have to make, my self relax, and it helps allot but I don't know why.
But you probably wont' like it if you don't at all like electronic anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=454NKz8b8_o

I think it works so well on me for a few reasons.

1. A few people seem to think I may be on the autism spectrum somewhere, I don't know if that's true but...

2.  The beat is always slower than I expect, so subconchusly I just slow my breath and heart rate too... Something I can actually feel happening, it also makes me focus more on the song and nothing else, and slows my thoughts.

3.  The womans voice to me is beautiful, and what they did with the piches catches her vocal range, I am a unashaimed sucker for chop ups, but not all, I have to say.

4. The slow heavy base just pounds the fight out of me, rofl, and I let it, because why the hell not?

5. The Simple melodys really pull me in, especially when they get flushed out at the end with the string plucks, and again with her voice.

6. The old timy electric piano type synth in the middle really gets me, I used to listen to NPR allot with my dad, and this one show had that inbetween segments allot, especially sadder ones or weirder ones, it reminds me of a time when my parents weren't divorced yet, where I knewwhere I stood before suddenly I had 3 more siblings from a woman my dad was with on a time out my parents had when I was young, after CPS took them away from her years later when my dad and her were not even close to each other, and I didn't see the problems with my dad and his anger, 99 percent verbal abuse at least, when I hadn't had to grow up too fast getting moved around so very much, like 20 times in 18 years, and that's just homes not schools which is closer to 30 or more, not counting those 2 transitional houses, or feel as though I let everyone downa round me in high school because I couldn't learn like everyone else, or that I'd screwed up my future because of my shit GPA, before I fell into the current bout of depression that I'm still in and had to get to know my new and unwanted dad, who has, no shit actual multiple personality disorder, with 36 alters and 6 main alters because of the horrible shit that happened to him when he was young with his parents, who I knew for several years before this unaware and even visited a few times by my self, because he had baried it so deep he couldn't remember, and all those alters are fragments of times his mind just broke because he couldn't deal with it and now hold seperit memories for him, they came out before in accents and slight personality changes which I just thought were great because he did them so well, and he was already really knolidgable about past and current world events and geography and cultures, which I still love about him at least, so it made sense, or the freakouts, which I realize now were alters he was suppressing.
This stuff just grounds me, other electronic music effects me in a big way too, but this song especially does this specific thing to me, I don't know why, probably because this shit all caught up to me all at once, I kept running and saying o it's fine I wont' freak out, it wont' be that bad, it was never an explosion, it was an implosion, and a long slow one, still going on, I mean I'm getting help, but honestly this stuff helps me in the moment most of all, never could do meditation, hard to talk to counslers, and I'm just so tired of trying to figure my self out, trying to label the reason I am so deathly afraid of toxans, even reading the word like I just did now makes my heart jump, or why I can't cross streets because I can't trust drivers I can't see, which I probably will get over with work at least I know that, or how I can have halusinations that are so rediculously real that I feel like I'm going to die, and I'm paralized with fear all night, though to be fare that's only happened a few times in my life, but they were the absolute worst nights of my life, imagine the precise instant in time where you think about the thing that scares you the most right now, weather it's something you've been suppressing, something you just read about or watched on tv or something, and you thinka bout it killing you, like a snapshot of all 5 senses at that exact time that your heart stops and you scream your last scream, that's what happens to me, again, and again, and again, sometimes per second or more, you can't move because you see the thing your scared of in an exact position in your oom and you just know it's there, there is no rationalization what so ever at this point, your mind is either blank or shrieking, and it keeps going back and forth with no in between.
That also has allot to do with my excellent facial vision, I can imagine shapes, from any sounds I hear, but when I am confronted with 0 sound or small unexplained sounds at a time like that, it helps me construct a realistic shadow, so to speak which is very, very useful in O and M, but when you are constructing the thing that scares you to this degree and it's always moving towards you and touching you again and again. well it's not so great...

Also, holy shit that list item was long... rofl, I got carried away, I hope I didn't ruin your already depressing December thread Dark, sorry.

But, uh, I like that song? allot?

Anyway...

Hi,
@defender: I'm listening now, and wow. This is something cool. I'm not usually one for too many electronic tunes, but this one has quite a lot of different layers and such, so thanks for introducing me to this.
Also, those hallucinations sound horrible!
As for me, I had a show last night with a group called First Act, and it went very well. My role was a sort of pompous head of a social services branch in the second half of the show, and it was quite challenging because while my character wasn't exactly evil, he was most certainly bogged down to the point where he couldn't help the main characters out, and was sort of strict in the process. I still managed to actually get some laughs from the audience though. it was quite an enjoyable, yet very different, role to what I was expecting. The rest of the cast were also really awesome, some were nervous but once they were up on stage, they were fine and they all performed their roles without a hitch. The songs were also quite good, from a rendition of Paul McCartney's simply having a wonderful Christmas time, to Shaking Steven's Merry Christmas everyone, to one little Christmas Tree by Steevy Wonder and even the cheasy y.m.c.a, it got the audience clapping along. The finale especially, Pharrel Williams's Happy which is from the Despicable Me sequel, the audience were really showing the support for the cast there, clapping and cheering. So, all in all, a good show and looking forward to next April, whatever the next show's going to be.
I also went to a place called Southampton on Monday, to do Christmas shopping. I was quite excited because in the Disney Store, and I think @tward might like this, they had some new Star Wars toys which spoke and made sounds. I don't exactly know what they're called, but you had Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Chubacka, a stormtrooper and Han Solo. They are quite tall, I think around 18 inches, not too sure on the measurement though. They have a button on their chests which makes them speak, and on their shoulder they have a button which makes weapon sounds. They all said around fifteen different phrases.

@Defender, by "sterriotype" I simply meant that you were taking a large chunk of the world and making a catagorical statement about how people behaved. The so called "third world" is made up of a huge number of different countries and cultures from India to Africa, and generalizing in such a way about such a large proportion of the world's population seems not to be     helpful.

I'm a little confused how on the one hand you say "people get pissed about sterriotypes because they have some truth to them" and then go on to state that "people don't like their own culture being cryticized" sinse these two statements seem a little contradictory as a person who believes sterriotypes of races and cultures other than their own will be less likely to cryticize their own culture not more. I also confess I find your "all sterriotypes have some truth to them" a little worrying, indeed if people stopped thinking in such broad catagorizations and using prejudice, ie, pre judging others based on sets of external and often arbitrary groupings we'd probably be a better species and indeed individuals would get far more freedom over their lives than we actually do.