No worries, Bernard. The people have spoken!

The market has seen fit to...? This market of which you speak seems imperious. It doesn't seem to rest on a solid foundation nor to factor in the matter of the relation between the individual and society in neither an economic nor a social sense. Why would one assume the military should be privatized? There have always been mercenaries, but leaving this aside, how could a privatized military have an allegiance to a constitution? This is a rhetorical question. It couldn't. Our Constitution contains the provision that the military is under civilian command. This person's adventures are inconsistent with it. Also, this person's father's fortune, and his own, were built on literal slavery. It's a mining fortune held by apartheid fascists and slave owners. And, this is to say nothing about this person spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy US elections. IMHO, "oligarch who wants to take over the world" is a good theme for comedy, but not so much of a good idea in real life.

Hope Johnson gets quite a spanking, not the kind he wants, but one that hurts nonetheless.

I'm so dumb! The dental office was having an all day Halloween costume party. I don't celebrate Halloween plus I can be somewhat too literal at times in social situations if that makes sense. I failed to notice. This was the day of my initial appointment. I thought the receptionist was a security guard. Hahaha! She was very beautiful and charming too which didn't help matters. Omg.

OMG! I think a lot of people (including my mother!) kind of try to do something in return to scammers, and I’ve done that thing where you just respond to every question with a different question back at them until they hang up. (It’s kind of funny tbh!) So this is a good reminder that just hanging up is probably best! Yikes!

So to make a note of it- My Casio digital is F-91W. It's a decades old classic. Actually it's one of the most famous digital watches. It's old school size designed before the world headed in the big watch direction. It has time (duh), military time, calendar, alarm, stopwatch, the ability to perform a "grandfather-like clock" function, and a backlight function. I have a hard time seeing any of it because I'm farsighted. I have bought this same watch over decades. I used to be able to read it as clear as day. Life. It has 3 physical buttons. There's a very completed set of instructions about which button to press, which to press simultaneously, and which to press and hold, in which sequence, to hack it, let alone other functions. It's easy to press and hold to turn on the back light. That's about it for my old self. My plan is to let the battery die and keep the watch, and continue to wear it occasionally. I wouldn't be without one. I can't set it. And inflation. I've told this story but my Casio analog, white dial, small Arabic numerals (the large numerals variant came later) went from $13 to $29 in the most recent price hike (for a watch that never had price hikes). So I'm not paying for another digital, and the analog will get a battery replacement. Interesting trivia- There's an urban legend that OBL used this watch to detonate the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yes, even though airplanes were involved. Yes, even though OBL wasn't in the US on 9/11. Yes, it makes no sense at all. But the urban legend continues.

@RealPlayer thank you!

A great date in those teenage years for when headlights are approaching.

@RealPlayer said: too clean, sterile side. Yep, I think that's what I'm hearing and of course @adagiom 's comments. @AdagioM said: It would be interesting to ask your uni tuner if he tunes the Fazioli. I know that he doesn't any more, because he is fully retired, but I don't know if he used to. I also don't know how long they've had the Fazioli, but for some reason I think it's somewhat recent. Anyway, I'll ask the next time he's here. @rontuner are you semi-retired now or still keeping a full schedule? (my memory is semi-retired?) How many pianos do you think you see, or used to see, a month?

@bernard You wrote- "Once-in-a-while I'll get a McDonald's 2 cheeseburger meal but not for the quality of the food, for nostalgic reasons. Fond memories attached to my first visit to a McDonald's when I was in high school." That's my favorite too and you've just made me realize why I still eat it (although I'm swearing it off). It's comfort food for me. Except its current engineered version is having the opposite effect on my body. It makes me physically uncomfortable and even sick. Well how many time do you have to touch a hot burner to know it will burn you? I think I've finally reached my limit. I'll achieve 50g protein today- I got up, couldn't focus on eating, went to my appointment, got home, stated making protein drinks. I've made the 3rd one with 10g this time. I have to take a break. I can't drink it now. I ate a variety of food yesterday. Today had to concentrate on protein.

I was out in the woods in a cabin, no trick or treaters out there!

@wtg said: @AndyD Love the rectory. The interior space is very inviting and I love the gardens. Three months in spring would be nice there. Three in summery Dublin. Then three autumn months in Japan. And three winter months in Penang I've pretty much finished the house and can plan my retirement properly

Especially with the strength of the stuff now. I recently shared a joint with someone. It reminded me of why I haven't done that for 40+ years. It was not the fun silly little buzz it was in my youth, but felt more disassociative like PCP or something. I cannot imagine it helps anyone with any sort of brain or nervous function.

Was visiting the Porsche museum and learnt about this piece of pre-1900 EV history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egger-Lohner_C.2_Phaeton The Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton, erroneously called Porsche P1, is an electric vehicle built by Egger-Lohner. … It is powered by the "octagon" electric motor, that Ferdinand Porsche designed, which took its name from the eight-sided design of the motor housing. The electric motor can produce an output of 3 hp (2.2 kW) at 350 rpm and, for short periods of time, up to 5 hp (3.7 kW) with a top speed of 35 km/h (22 mph) by overcharging it. … On September 28, 1899, Porsche drove a C.2 that was entered in the Berlin road race, where it won the gold medal and crossed the finish line 18 minutes before the second car. It also came out on top in the efficiency test, where it was recorded as the lowest energy consumption vehicle in urban traffic.

@jon-nyc said: @Steve-Miller said: … and go stay somewhere else. That was always my plan. The problem is when there’s a huge power outage everyone else has that plan and the nearby hotels fill up. Once I spent a week hopping between hotels every night or two for a week. You’d believe the reports that power will be restored tomorrow, then when it isn’t, and you call to extend, they say no because the room has been rented out. So I find another hotel. Then the same thing happens again. The next month I bought the generator. We have the same problem with hurricanes. By the time you need to rent a room there are none- zero. It's a fictional option. The y say conditions in shelters (I've been told) during hurricanes aren't ideal. In the case of my acquaintance his experience included backed up toilets and no toilet paper. The authorities come through with cars with sirens and bullhorns telling us to leave. I spent Helene at a friend's house in Pasco. I stayed home for Milton. Milton was the one they thought might hit Tampa directly. It wiped out much of Ft. Meyers instead Btw, Our power is underground. The power in HI isn't underground for residential. Drilling tunnels through volcanic rock- not happening. The privatized utility charges a fortune (I mean an astronomical amount) but never keeps the lines properly maintained vis a vis trees and underbrush. Better to give the money to the shareholders. Bog stand routine there. So in a storm, the poles fall over, the broken lines start fires, and towns burn to the ground. Oh, and if there's a hurricane in HI, there's really nowhere to go. You're ****ed.

Just one?

@kluurs holy cow! That’s a crazy huge number! also sounds like fun. In the end, we only had the two groups. There are some families with kids in the neighborhood, but we are at the end of our street. And we didn’t have decorations up earlier, so those factors might be part of it. Oh, and our immediate neighbors next door have two daughters but they are away, and our across-the-street neighbors don’t have kids. So maybe I could have predicted this, but we had more last year so I wasn’t expecting our turn out to be this low. There are two places in town (not our neighborhood but along the commute to work) that do amazing Halloween displays, one with a huge selection of those massive balloon characters, very very cute, young kid-friendly. The other is the scary kind, with giant skeletons, a skeleton dinosaur, a scarecrow man that looks like its must be 10 feet tall. I wonder how many visitors those places get.

Nevada and Connecticut won't for long. Link to video We get an extra hour of sleep tonight. Yeah.