2017-09-02 23:54:10

Welcome to yet another instalment of monthly chat, where we chat about stuff each month, though you probably new that already big_smile.

As to what stuff, well whatever you like really, generally some combination of what's going ion in your life, how many people you've murdered, what your playing/reading/watching/listening to at the moment, whether your plans to take over the world  progressing nicely, all that sort of thing.
As is also usual I get the privilege of starting up, though actually if anyone had started a monthly chat topic yesterday in my absence I wouldn't have midned.

I confess right now gaming and this forum is taking something of a miner back seat since as I said last month, I'm in the process of moving house and between all the Bureaucracy, furniture unpacking and attempts to utilise space gaming hasntt exactly been on my mind of late, which is a shame since I think I'm going to utterly miss an alteraeon event, and because I wanted to start a new character on either lensemoor or coffee mud, and to do some more db pages for fruitpot, cyber assault and some other games.

I can't even play games on my IPhone because the battery is now so dead it'll barely go ten minutes without being powered, so I'll also need to either get a new battery or a new iPhone.

In fairness I wasn't going to get a new iPhone anyway, but I was going to wait until Christmas when I would be more likely to get a 7 cheaper, as it is we'll see, it'll depend upon firstly whether one can! replace an IPhone 5 battery, and secondly how much said replacement will cost given that I wasn't planning on using the thing for too much longer.

Oh well, games arent' going anywhere, though a bit of gaming might be nice given that said move is rather stressful, and I'm feeling nostalgic for the place I've lived in Durham for the past 10 years, also becoming a wee bit worried about what the hell I'm going to do in said new location.

Well we'll see.

In other news, because I need something very absorbing, and something I don't have to review, I've started on Robbin Hobb'snew trilogy about Fitz chivalry. Fool's assassin, Fool's quest and assassin's fate.

I was waiting to start these until the series was complete since I didn't want a big fat clif hanger.
Not books for anyone who wants a none stop action fest (though Hobb's books never are), but still very absorbing, with unique ideas about magic and character I really! like, nice when I start to feel a bit overwhelmed at trying to get wall paper and carpets and all the other things I need to battle with fixed.

Hope everyone else is okay.

Btw, I also do gather the recent spam problem, and I apologise to everyone for not being around to deal with things as much, it's very unfortunate timing really.

Hope everyone else is having a less hectic and less tiring time than I am right now.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-03 06:10:26

As for me, i've recently been looking into buying pro tools for my mac, for anybody who doesn't know its proffetional recording software. Today I made several atempts to install the free demo version but am still unable to for what ever reason.
As for people i've murdered, that's nun, unless you count zombified people in swamp witch would be about 300 in the passed day, offline since my account is out of time at the moment.
My plans for taking over the world are indeedgoing as planned, or were however until you dark posted that as an example to tell new comers what they could talk about... Perhaps word of my plan has got out to you? I should hope not, given that it was a secret plan that you could only get to if you could read minds, but given that you've read quite a few books i imagine you've found a convenient way of doing that, my only wish now is for you to not reveal my plan as that would make planning the plan not wurth planning and also having a plan would not be a great thing either... I'm very sleepy as well given its close to 2 in the morning currently, sorry if this message is either pointless or doesn't make sence, i'm atempting to joke around but that doesn't work as wel when i'm tired.
Does anybody have experience with pro tools first on the mac? The free version? I may create a new topic if people do, but i'm not sure if anybody does, i need help actually installing the thing, its very confusing.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-09-03 18:52:01

@Rory I do indeed know about yoru plan, however I also know that me knowing about your plan is all part of your plan, likewise my revealing that I know about your plan and that I know me knowing about your plan is part of your plan is also part of your plan, and in turn me telling everyone that I know that you know that I know that you know I know about your plan and my revealing that I know that you know that I know that you knowing about me knowing your plan is part of your plan as well.
so your plan is safe, unless it isn't and it's actually all part of my plan big_smile.

Well more house related shenanigans today, so more stress which isn't good, though it will be fixed eventually, albeit right now it's covered in boxes and bits off furniture and there wont' even be any net access until the fourteenth (one reason Mrs. dArk and I are staying at my parents for the time being).

Tomorrow I need to ring my phone provider and see about new handsets being as my battery is dead, and while I will phone apple just to check, I'm fairly  that replacing the battery will be more trouble than replacing the IPhone.

A shame, there goes all my progress on crafting kingdom, but oh well, so it goes.

I still also need to try and get some good out of the echo dot I got for Christmas, and with the adventure games that is tempting, though again that is a lot of hassle and requires a good net connection first.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-03 20:57:38

@Dark: wow, that sounds hectic. Wishing you best of luck with the move.
I have been dealing with some of the spambots we have been getting, or at least the ones I noticed. Am wondering if this new whitelist system/new forum with another introductions topic will help. Unfortunately even though I'm a mod I think a bit of dumbness has snuck into me because I can't currently tell how this new system works and how I'd go about approving new accounts, and I've checked the more logical places, namely the administration panel and various profile pages, but maybe it's not showing up because the profiles I've checked are users who are already approved? I've also started writing an article for my local blind society who has a new CEO, and this person seems to want to update things a bit, so that's exciting because they contacted my Dad who past it onto me so I'm now just basically writing about what I do and stuff, hoping to submit that to the newsletter soon. It's quite exciting and I'm wondering what will happen, just in regards to the society in general. It's seeming surprisingly positive.
Now, about this world-taking-over plan... Dark's post was the first I heard about it, although @Rory posting about the plan, and that being part of another plan, well I don't know if I have any plan that I can add to said plan because I don't plan to necessarily take over the world, unless I'm aloud to continue my planned playthrough of Thumper and Cyclepath on the xbox one while we contribute said plan of plans, unless someone else takes over the plan with another plan which does stuff to all the other plans. And then there's the matter of planets. Ha, I bet you thought I was just going to type the word plan again. Well, there you go, I typed it near the end of the last sentence, so I hope I made you plan types happy, hehe, although earlier I said planets, so yeah, I'm now running out of stuff to say on said subject for now so I plan to let someone else reply.

2017-09-04 02:27:23

I quite enjoy cycle path, I play it on my mac and its pretty great. I'm still trying to get ramps inabled, i'm not sure how many coins i'll need for that though.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-09-04 03:21:35

Nothing going on this way but gamedev and family members popping in and out of the hospital so quickly I don't find out until after it's all over.
Also been rereading random bits from With This Ring (Young Justice SI), which I only mention because some of the world domination talk somewhy reminded me of it tongue. It occurs to me That it doesn't really feel as interesting, character-wise, after Contingency on the Paragon side, which is kinda bothersome since the Renegade path was originally just a few "What if Paul was more of an ars?" outtake-type things. I suppose the main thing that distinguishes it from the bog-standard superhero story it's based on (besides the occasional riffing) is that the SI is not a superhero, so much as a guy who woke up with a Power Ring in a universe where everyone who could get him on his feet is already either a superhero or supervillain. He's mostly trying to get everyone to stop pointlessly antagonizing each other and use the piles of schizzotech littering the average comicbook to improve things, rather than as one-off mcghuffins or weapons. Ex, giving freeze rays to fire fighters, trying to reform criminals instead of accepting the cops-and-robbers status quo, pointing out that this world has magic but no one studies it because it sounds goofy. Speaking of which, he starts out so vulnerable to magic that it takes little exposure to get him drunk-ish. Also-also, his power is fueled by Avarice, and will amplify that aspect of his personality over time, so he spends a lot of time trying to steer the eventual insanity in a productive direction.
I got a bit carried away, didn't I? -_- If I'm going to write a crappy review, better to do so with ... paragraph-breaks, at least. hmm

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2017-09-04 14:53:51

Well yesterday house moving stressness went to something of a new level, though on the plus side I was able to do the new alter event after all which was cool.
My cyclepath game is stuck on my desktop, though being as it's online I presume I can probably just download it on my laptop. Still, I was having fun with alter and adventure at C yesterday, or at least when not getting stressed at my house.

With the IPhone, my mum has come up with a good solution, It turns out (despite how long Apple tech support kept me on the damn phone), that a new IPhone 5 battery costs 86 quid. However, since my mum wants my iPhone 5 when I've finished with it, she's agreed to buy the battery on the consideration that I'll show her how to use Vo when I get an IPhone 7, probably around Christmas or November.

This means that I can go on with my old phone and don't have to try and master a new phone or configure it while I'm trying to move house and do goodness knows how many other things, also that I don't get a whacking bill at the same time I'm paying out for wall paper and carpets and other sundries, and most importantly that I don't lose my progress on crafting kingdom or fruitpot, or at least not for a little while big_smile.

I think the IPhone 5 will do what my mum wants it for even if Apple do invalidate the os for this silly 64 bit thing (which just seems about greed to me. Still since my mum just wants phone functions and photo sending and perhaps a copy of blind square it shouldn't be too much of a problem, though if anyone would like to confirm what an IPhone 5 won't be able to do when Apple invalidate the os I'd appreciate knowing since I don't want to see my mum stuck with a none working phone.

Also more bureaucratic shenanigans with the council, and royal mail service not actually knowing where my new house is, despite it having stood there for three hundred years big_smile.

Hopefully this afternoon we can all have a bit of a break, since we all really need one.

On the plus side Robin Hobb Rocks! not a series for someone who wants none stop action, but good grief the characters are compelling, and the world continues to be fascinating. i'll be busy with this trilogy for quite some time, not that I mind.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-04 15:50:46

Audiogames.net appears to be loosing its focus, if it ever had one.

I had always thought that this sight was supposed to be about games that are accessible to the blind or visually impaired, but lately I've seen lots of threads hear about how to play games not designed for the visually impaired.

I have nothing against these games, I just don't believe they belong on a site that supposed to be all about audio games. It's very annoying to hear about a game that sounds like it might be something I might be interested in only to find out that it's an Xbox or PS4 game and that the only way to play it is to memorise the menu system and then try to hear very subtle audio cues to know when to push this button or that other one. That's not something I'm looking for.

And then there's the question of Steam. Valve has been completely unresponsive to the idea of making Steam accessible and that alone I think is reason enough to say that games that are only available through the Steam platform also do not belong here.

But if the owners and members have decided to allow this inaccessible content on the site, I would ask that they create a separate section for them so that those of us not interested in this inaccessible material can easily avoid it.

Otherwise, as time goes by, we're going to find that audiogames.net is more about games that are playable by the visually impaired and less about games that are accessible.

2017-09-04 18:04:00

There aren't many pro-ish devs puting out Accessible content compared to 2008-2013, and meanwhile there are murmers in the dark about increasing attention to accessibility from mainstream companies and platforms, and mainstream games have always out-qualitied Audio Games, so I can see why it's going in that direction. That said, I'm likewise not thrilled about it.
I kinda think this issue might deserve its own topic, probably in the Off-topic room, since it feels more community-oriented than the site and forum feedback posts tend to be, but I just use the active topics page anyway, so the choice of room doesn't matter to me so long as it isn't in New Releases or the Developers' Room. smile

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2017-09-04 19:21:52

@k_jones

If you think this would be better off in it's own thread in another part of the forum, I can always copy my message and use it to start a thread.

2017-09-04 21:52:21

The site policy  is that new releases, news and the db has to be accessible games only, but general game discussion is related to any sort of games, including playable mainstream ones.
there have always been discussions about playable mainstream games, at least part of the reason however that general game discussion seems so much more about them these days is simply that discussions about new accessible releases have been moved to the new releases room, and that even older games that are still under discussion such as Manamon, the gate, survive the wild etc have moved to new releases too, indeed I've noticed that threadcromancy and monster sized topics have been rather an increasing fad in the last few years, and where previously a new release like Entombed would spawn a hole bunch of different smaller topics with various questions, these days one major new release like crazy party just has one huge monster topic that gets used for everything!

Getting back to mainstream games, Cae is right on the quality gap, and having spent years myself playing 16 bit style graphical games I can't begrudge people discussing what is playable so long as the main focus of this site is still accessible games,,  albeit that I'm afraid rumours about this or that or the other mainstream company perhaps maybe at some point in the future thinking vaguely about adding some sort of accessibility have been floating in the wind for the last 12 years, and I suspect are just pipe dreams so long as the major development decisions are made by committees of executives stuck under  a mountain somewhere who know more about demographics than game design.
Steam I'll save for the discussion in site and forum feedback, but that is my thoughts on your initial question there Orco, at least from the perspective of someone who's been around the forum for a scarily long time.

Then again like everything else these things go in cycles. It's mainstream and E A games today, at one time it was Japanese games, at another muds, at another browser games, at another rpgs, first person shooters, strategy games or online mmorpgs.
such is just the way things go on a forum, people post topics and spark interest in similar matters, which dominate things until the next phase starts.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-05 21:36:45

ok, so for everyone under 18 bet that they have complained in this topic about things like school, teachers, classes, etc. well, it's all boring, and monotony. where ever I go it's boring, what ever I do makes me bord, etc. as for people who I have murded, you can count in some people on redspot, well, someone who has died on my maps in sbyw also count in, and but not so mutch, but robot population on humans versus robots are very lowerd by my pkm and shotgun gage 12. as for plans for  ruling over the world, I don't like games like sound rts, so expect it's null.  I have bin reading some detective stories recently, and plan about downloading the  5th season of CSI, it's quite old but meh, one cant keep up with times now. but, I am now planning to buy an mack  book. this del laptop is so slow, my downloads is like my jungle, and, well, let's say that to do what alt tab is doing takes about 5 seconds. nightmerr! As for games, everything the same. redspot, tk, hvr, sbyw, and from time to time vizitte qc playroom, but not mutch at the moment. btw I am planning to host a website, and I simply don't know what plan to choos and have hardly written a singull tag of my index. making something but I am not going to tell you about it...
big_smile big_smile big_smile
kind regards,
Aleksandar

If life gives you communism, become a communist dictator.

2017-09-09 00:05:41

big gun, As someone who watches old doctor who from the 70's  and is currently watching through buffy and angel from the early 2000's, I can't criticise anyone for not being current with tv big_smile.
Redspot actually still needs a db entry, along with undead assaults, humans vs robots and god knows how much else, though sadly right now gaming  still not a priority as the new house is covered in boxes and Mrs. dark and I have barely time to breathe, today I had two runs to the bank,  about 40 minutes on the phone to gas companies, so other than some light crafting an alteraeon I've not really being doing much gaming of late.

One thing which is disappointing is the situation with my IPhone 5 and battery. so I get to the apple shop to be told that either A, I have to buy a new IPhone 5, or B, have the phone disassembled to put in a new battery which means a full system reset.
Since the only reason I wasn't planning to get the 7 immediately was that I can't be bothered to do a full system reset right now as I have so many other things to do, I'm still stuck with my old  IPhone 5 which works fine on power but only for about ten minutes flat off it (it sort of makes a mockery of the term mobile phone) big_smile.

So it'll be a case of waiting probably until November and then getting the 7, and doing without in the mean time, which is a miner pest, but not too bad given that Mrs. dark also has an IPhone which has a fully working battery big_smile.

Still I have to question apple's ridiculous design on making the battery so dam difficult to  replace as compared to older designs of phones or even devices like laptops or my Victor, or to not offer external battery packs (you can get an external charge unit, but since my phone only holds ten minutes of charge that'd be rather pointless).

Of cours eit's the usual apple thinking of making it as hard as possible for you to continue with an old device and force you to buy a new one, but when I can't get a new one not because of the money, but because of the hassle in setting the bugger up, it  shows the limitation.

In other news, Robin Hobb continues to be amazingly awesome!  actually quite scary given both how busy Mrs. dark and I have been, and yet we're both reading through Fool's errand together and are a quite staggering amount through the book, and considering the book is both very large (about 33 hours), and not exactly fast passed that is astounding.

Then again that isn't to say the book is lacking in action just that you get to see all the action unfold slowly and carefully and have maximum impact on characters, a battle has a hole different meaning when you know the two people  and where they've come from and how they've got there,  Hobb has a real talent for showing how scuzbags get their just desserts, especially considering how often they manage to screw themselves over through their own greed or belief in their own rightness.

Ttfn.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-09 06:15:50

Hi.
Well dark, why do you want to get the iPhone 7? I think the iPhone SE would be a better phone for your taste when I read you right, I think in another topic I talked about the advantages of the SE.
Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2017-09-09 10:36:50

Only thing that IPhone SE is better then 7 is the  battery, and as farr as I know it's the same as Iphone5s. but, well, if you ask me, I would suggest buying an IPhone 7. btw does anyone think that there will be a new IPhone this year? I have red on apples website all about ios11 andthings, but nothing about a new IPhone. bet they have to  take a brake. xd.
btw Just tried the blinded guide,  never liked that kind of games mutch, but it sounds cool.  and my score was 88 of 103 on the first level and I died on level 2. Can anyone beet this? big_smile big_smile

If life gives you communism, become a communist dictator.

2017-09-09 14:20:33

BigGun
Yes, Apple will be announcing three new iPhones on Tuesday 12 September 2017.
They might be named iPhone 8 iPhone 8 plus and iPhone special edition as it will be ten years since the first iPhone was released.
I think they will use face recognition unlocking system instead of the finger print system on the existing phones.
They will also probably include pad charging for an extra charge. You will still be able to charge by plugging the AC adapter into the lightning port but you will be able to purchase a pad that charges the phone when it touches the pad, no plugging in cables and leaving the lightning port free for things like headphones.
Of course they will be more expensive and the price of the iPhone 7 should drop a bit.

2017-09-09 20:28:01

@fill, this sounds cool. this new charging technik sounds like on apple watch, like a magnet that's on the on the lower side and you just put a pad on that peace of magnet and it's charging. About face thing, are they still going  to have touch id? I am just worried  like it's very difficult thing to photograph your self when you are blind.
Kind regards,
Aleksandar

If life gives you communism, become a communist dictator.

2017-09-10 16:13:21

@Simba, my issue with the SE is basically that I'm concerned about the hardware, especially to do with the new haptic gyro, touch system and satnav, since I am very interested in the potential of the galilao network next year. My chief concern with the 7 was whether it came with a 3.5 headphone adapter as I do not like either the sound quality or inconvenience of Bluetooth headphones and the hole lightning thing just seems yet another monopolisation by apple, but as it comes with an adapter to  plug headphones into a lightning port we'll see.

Likewise, since whichever way you cut the proverbial cookie, I won't be getting an IPhone until Christmas, whether I get the 7, the 8 or something else I don't know at this point in time. I'd like it to last as long as possible, but we'll see as cash is probably going to be a bi short of late.

Yesterday was busy as hell! more shenanigans with new house, though we did get to one very nice  recital of Vaughn Williams and Shubert, which apparently happen at a church just down from where our new house is, which  okay I think, though still the place is hardly feeling like home and we're both very shattered, one reason I've not tried Blinded guide yet myself, though hopefully I'll have time to give it a go this afternoon.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-13 16:47:34

Hello.
Big Gun, sorry if parts of the following post will be boring for you, but here we go:
School has started this week and so I will have limited time for gaming in the coming months. GStill, I can Play a bit. I am currently struggling with Night Of Parasite.

About  the IPhone Thing, I would personally go for a SE because it still has a 3.5 mm headphone port and is not as big as the newer models.

I am currently reading The Martian and trying to get to watching the TV series "Prison Break".

Have a nice day
Julian

Greetings and happy gaming, Julian

If you say you never lie, you're a liar.
Oh, and #freeGCW

2017-09-14 18:55:22

@BigGun
The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8+ will have touch ID but not iPhone ten.
You ask what happened to iPhone 9?
7, 8, 9.
That's an old joke, using ate instead of eight.

2017-09-14 20:59:37

hahaha. well, I am quite patiently waiting for I phone 10 or 9 or what ever, just hope that apple won't bankrupt in a few days. big_smile I have all reddy downloaded the 5th season of CSI, those first few episodes were quite boring, but I have recently watch one with some kind of paint killer. won't describe it here, because bet that someone will be horrified, and that someone will comment like stupid way to catch crivinals etc. I am quite board at the moment. I have to do my homework and goodness knows what, pluss I won't to game even more.
Kind regards,
Aleksandar

If life gives you communism, become a communist dictator.

2017-09-17 14:58:29

Lol Phil that's an old one.
Did you hear about the two cats having a swimming race across the English channel? One called one two three, one called In Deux trois.

One two three won because In Deux Trois Quatre Cinq.

Btw, if your just reading this with an English Sinth my probably won't get it so see see This page on how to pronounce French numbers.

Well as you can gather from my absence on the forum recently, I've been very busy with the house moving, indeed this is the first post I'm writing from my new house, though I'm having to use my laptop since my desktop is still in bits in a box down stairs in a room which is in the process of having wall paper put on it big_smile.

The place is very gradually starting to look less like a disaster in awarehouse and a little more like an actual place where people live with furniture and such, though it'll take a while until everything is fixed, and I will admit both Mrs. Dark and I are rather stressed at the moment, one reason site updates and such have had to wait as I've not really had time or energy to spend too much on games recently, though I do hope to get back to alteraeon today.

On the plus side we now finished Robin Hobb's fool's assassin trilogy which is a really major end to the series, though the last book is probablye darkest thing Hobb has ever written. Indeed Aria Stark has a pretty solid competitor for toughest ten year old in fiction in Bee Farseer big_smile.
I don't know whether I'll review the book, but I would like to.

One thing we do need to do is see what is in this town. My efforts to find pizza places the other night something of a disaster since unless I told Siri to limit the search to "places within ten miles" the first thigns it kept bringing up were in Peter burgh, which is fourty miles away!
So we finished up at dominoes which is horribly expensive, about 14 quid for an eight inch pizza, that's about 22 dollars. It's okay if you get a so called Deal which just means it's about the same price as everywhere elsee, and their actual is okay but not particularly fantastic, we're going to need to ask around and see what we can find hre.

On the plus we no longer have a half hour walk to the nearest supermarket which will help quite a lot with buying general food type of things, ditto with the train station so we'll see.

Either way, moving house is definitely not! fun, albeit it'll probably be worth while in the end, ---- we hope.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-18 08:08:10

Disaster!  That's the word that's gonna start off this post!  I got near about squashed!  Tramppled!  Smashed!  Pounded!  Blown away!  By some great big ugly girly bully!  Her name, they say, was Irma, and she came into town... Well, more like, blasted into the state, I guess because it was that time of the week or month or year or century or paycheck cycle or what have you, and uh, proceeded to reak havoc and chaos on everything!  And it wasn't pretty!  Trees down everywhere!  Powerlines on top of the trees!  Mobile homes flipped and stripped to bits!  Tornados dancing around all of our neighborhoods!  She took North Korea's plan of mass destruction and war machines and intercontinental missiles and hydrogen bombs to the next level and rained down terror from the skies!  And the seas!  And even from below the seas, said some earthquake detection instruments!  Yes, even below the seas, this 500 mile wide monstrous big bertha could be felt as she came charging at us with ravaging fury!  Did I mention that Florida is not 500 miles wide?
But did we Floridians back down?  No, ladies and gentlemen of ag net, we did not! We stood our ground!  We stared category 5 danger in its evil little salty porky piggy eyes and told her to bring it on, because she was gonna do it anyway!  We boarded up, stocked up and prepared for what was to some of us, the largest siege of our lives!   Apparently she had some old Grandpappy named Andrew back in the 90's who was nowhere near as bad as she was, and she swore vengeance on his behalf, because Florida just hadn't felt enough recently.  Yes indeed!  We fortified and prepared!  Because we had no choice!  When it became obvious that giant of a thing was heading our way everything including bus, train and plane tickets sold out faster than popcorn and hotdogs at sporting events and in the movie theaters!  The highways, you say?  Nope!  Backed up for miles and miles to the point where many bridges and outgoing lanes were rerouted.  So, at least a few million of us stayed behind to brace ourselves for this localized distortion in our lives.  No biggy, right?  This is Florida?  We're prepared?
Six million of us ended up without power!  After a week, I finally got mine back, but Irma ate all my food!  And what she didn't eat, she roasted away to nothing!  Complete spoilage, because I had no power and no way to keep anything cold!  Way to go, Irma!  I learned I don't mess with girls!  Really!  I'm sorry!  Really really sorry!  I'll buy your cousin Maria whatever she wants, just keep her away from here, will ya?  Oh, and thanks for giving your Husband Jose the headsup that there was nothing left from our barbecue parties and potato chip bags and bowls of dip while we sat around watching the weather channel; he decided not to come in for the leftovers which was real real nice!  I love you, darling!  I really do!  I'm sorry!  From the bottom of my broken powerlines, and shutters, and the tree you chose to dump in my back yard... I really do appreciate you and all you've done for me!  But please, I'm begging you with bended knees, as I sit at my keys, consider relenting and telling Mary to chill out?  Chill ice?  Chill pineapples and mangos or whatever other tropical things might be left round them islands she's happily nosing around in right now?  Please?  Have mercy?
All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good week

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2017-09-18 13:59:05

Good gravy nocturnus, how anyone can be so cheerful about a Hurricane I don't know, but thumbs up at least for shooting the breeze with us about it even if you weren't able to shoot the breeze in a more terminal way as far as evil Irma was concerned.
quite seriously, I really hope everything is still relatively okay, or at least rebuildable, since this seems bloody unfair after the massive flood you  had not long ago.
I hope things over there are sort of getting back to normal and your able to move that tree and actually have useful things, like food.

Let us know if we can do anything to help.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-18 19:20:43

Thank you, Dark.  Honestly, it could have been way, way worse.  My house is mostly intact, I have no water damage this time anywhere, and the power's back now, so living here is starting to feel as relaxing as it ever did.  My AC unit works, I have food for the next couple of days or so, and my wife is going grocery shopping pretty soonish so we should make out alright.  My kids are all in their respective pieces, which is good because they have no return policy or repair instructions manual I'm aware of, though I've been tempted to looked high and low for the latter every once in awhile, particularly when they start acting up.
Where cheeriness is concerned, I spent enough time in life feeling sorry for myself and the sad state of affairs facing humanity, long enough to come to the realization that all of us require someone to step forward at least once in our lives and do their best to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.  If I can help in any which way I can by poking fun at myself and the sticky situations I find myself in some times, even if it just makes one person smile, why shouldn't I?  But even more importantly, I believe in a God that is greater than all of these things; it's not poppular, but for me, at least, it has changed my life and my outlook on things.  I wish the world felt more of what I feel; it's not happiness... I'd say it's a feeling that surpasses human comprehension, but for now, just about everyone I know calls it joy.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.