Octopus Overlords

We have taught her that murderers do not inherit from their victims. So you’ll be safe from non-natural causes of death.

Unfortunately, my lovely wife watches all sorts of police shows. So I’m pretty sure my youngest has learned a few “accidental” causes.

"You hit him with an axe"

"It was an accident!"

"47 times?"

"I was nervous"

Jaymon wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:01 pm "You hit him with an axe"

"It was an accident!"

"47 times?"

"I was nervous"

I had to scroll back up as I thought you were talking about this.

It's bad that Medicare doesn't cover dental (I am one bad tooth away from not being able to chew for the rest of my life), but the one thing that nobody seems to talk about is that Medicare also does not cover regular check-up. I haven't had a physical exam or preventative testing since it was part of my cancer treatment, and it is unlikely that I will soon. As I am months from 50, that's a big nervous-maker.

The VA doesn't cover dental either and I have a rotted tooth already too. But if I take it out I'll be hard pressed to ever eat meat again.

I eat meat all the time.

NO Hepcat I see you lurking there. No, Bad Hepcat.

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 3:51 pm The VA doesn't cover dental either and I have a rotted tooth already too. But if I take it out I'll be hard pressed to ever eat meat again.

Meat is easy. Vegetables that aren't boiled to pointless goo are almost impossible. And have you ever tried gumming potato chips?

Jaymon wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:01 pm "You hit him with an axe"

"It was an accident!"

"47 times?"

"I was nervous"

If we ever return to holding Octocons, there's an axe throwing place a few miles down the road from the church rec center we meet at. I went with Red Warlord the last time he was here and we had a blast.

When I was in my mid-teens, I had a couple of throwing stumps in my backyard for knife and axe throwing. I used to go out and throw almost every day. In fact, when I decided it was time to change my standard online name twenty-something years ago, I went with the name of the throwing axe brand I had always wanted to own back in those days.

I learned to throw an axe backwards so it always landed upside down.

Is that true?

Daehawk wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:46 pmIs that true?

Throwing it backwards to land upside down? Yes.

We (the group of recreators I used to hang with) used to play a game called 'handles.' The target was just a stump cross section on a stand, maybe 12"-18" thick and 12"-24" across. Something like this:



We'd do a normal round (closest to the center wins) to establish an order - worst throw is first, best throw is last, the rest according to how well they did in the first round. The goal was simply to hit everyone else's handle - which usually meant that they had to buy a new one (the handles were wooden, fairly inexpensive, and easily replaced.) If you failed to stick it on your throw, you had to pick it up and manually stick it in horizontally across the center - you were almost guaranteed to get your handle hit that way.

The really talented throwers, if they had to go early, could sometimes throw with their blade backwards and hit the top edge of the target in such a way that the handle rotated over the top and lay horizontally across the top of the target. Done correctly, it made it almost impossible to hit your target - but it was risky. Mess it up, and you'd like miss entirely or hit handle-first and fail to stick - either way, and you were putting it in horizontally.j

We did a lot of throwing, and spent as much time throwing knives as axes. Horse was a popular game with both - just like the basketball version, you had to take turns repeating the first person's throw. That's when you sway people doing long throws, backwards over the shoulder throws, bent over between-the-legs throws, and so on.

A last, related thing. We used the same stump for the tie-breaker for our shooting matches (we're talking patch-and-ball black powder here.) We'd have one axe, double-bitted, stuck vertically into the center of a stump. Each shooter was assigned two playing cards. When it was your turn, you'd pin one card to each side of the axe. The idea was to shoot the axe blade, split the ball in half, and hit both cards. It was worth, I think, 0, 1, or 3 points depending on whether you hit zero, one, or both cards.

There were never any accidents, but there were a couple of close calls with the knife throwing when a particularly springy knife hit the target, flexed, and bounced straight back at the thrower. One person hit the deck when it happened (that was me.) The other actually had the knife hit their hat. Luckily, it was a top hat, so he escaped with nothing but a slightly more 'broken in' hat.

/edit - and just for context, we didn't throw crappy stamped steel mini-knives. The knives were required to be full length (most were at least 10", a lot of the closer to 14"), edged (but they usually weren't sharpened past the first inch), and period appropriate, and something that would actually be carried. Those suckers had mass.

Similar to this:

I think I would rather be shot than hit with a flying knife or ax. Legit terrifying.

There’s a reason they don’t allow liquor licenses for those places.

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 8:43 pm There’s a reason they don’t allow liquor licenses for those places.

Unless you're in NJ.

I know in most states they won’t allow it, so I was surprised to see that there are actually a few states that do.

Seems like a no brainer to me. You throw bladed weapons, you can’t drink alcohol. The place I linked to above limits you to three drinks. But Christ, it only takes two before I’m suddenly Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans and the people at table 3 look a shit load like French soldiers.

When is National Shake Yer Sausage Day? And do I need to fill out a form pre shaking?

Legalized sausage shaking is a cornerstone of the Constitution. Don’t your remember what happened at the Boston Sausage Party on December 17th, 1773?

Daehawk wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 8:57 pm When is National Shake Yer Sausage Day? And do I need to fill out a form pre shaking?

I don't know what that means, but I hope it's more fun than Toss Your Cookies Week.

I played that game yesterday.

Tomorrow starts 30 days of tax free groceries here in TN. I dont pay tax on my EBT but thats another week or more off. I can actually have some saving Wed when I go to get some needful things with money. Should stay li9ke this. We are taxed to death. Ive always thought Vets should not have to pay tax...Im now adding disabled shouldn't either. Also below poverty level income.

Wooo wow my Equifax score jumped up 48 points. Says a account was removed from my record. Boy that thing was weighing me down and I dont even know what it was. Nice.

Heh, I went to Equifax last week to unlock my account so I could get a new credit card (10% cash back on restaurants and gasoline for 6 months!) and my score was 806. After the new card was approved I logged in to lock it again and my score was 802. I got dinged four points just for letting a bank have a look-see.

Most groceries are sales tax-free in MA, as is clothing and alcohol -- life's necessities.

Ya you always get dinged on a credit check. Course they also tell you to open a new CC to improve your score. Kinda like telling an alcoholic drunk driver that they have to have a drink before they can enter the car.

Welp another day gone and time for bed. I have found it most helpful to stick my earbuds in and turn the vol down low on my tablet and let it play the sound track to Witcher 3's addon Blood & Wine. Its the sounds of Toussaint. Such a remarkable music and human voice tone sound track. Tracks can have ambient background sounds of the area or towns along with hums and light voice notes among the music. I love it so much and it has stuck to my head since finishing the game many months ago now.

I have another 2-3 hours before I can get to sleep. I'm trying to convince myself I need a couple of donuts to help me sleep.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:10 am Ya you always get dinged on a credit check. Course they also tell you to open a new CC to improve your score. Kinda like telling an alcoholic drunk driver that they have to have a drink before they can enter the car.

It’s like telling someone with a drinking problem to prove he doesn’t have a drinking problem (because he says he doesn’t) by purchasing a six pack and seeing if he can actually drink just one beer a night.

This article on Ars talks about some new cyrptographic key standards being worked on by NIST. One candidate recently failed when it was broken by a single, normal PC. The candidate was based on isogeny - a term I had never heard. So I foolishly tried to look it up.

Wikipedia wrote:In mathematics, in particular, in algebraic geometry, an isogeny is a morphism of algebraic groups (also known as group varieties) that is surjective and has a finite kernel.

If the groups are abelian varieties, then any morphism f : A → B of the underlying algebraic varieties which is surjective with finite fibres is automatically an isogeny, provided that f(1A) = 1B. Such an isogeny f then provides a group homomorphism between the groups of k-valued points of A and B, for any field k over which f is defined.

The terms "isogeny" and "isogenous" come from the Greek word ισογενη-ς, meaning "equal in kind or nature". The term "isogeny" was introduced by Weil; before this, the term "isomorphism" was somewhat confusingly used for what is now called an isogeny.

Egads - I think I only understand a handful of those words!

KKBlue wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2012 11:14 am So excited! A woman was wearing a sequined Little Miss Sunshine top in Germany! When I get back to the states, I'm showing off my new avatar!

Any chance you're a Buffalo Bills fan?

Farmer creates Mr Men Little Miss maze to mark 50 years (2021)

Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:28 am Welp another day gone and time for bed. I have found it most helpful to stick my earbuds in and turn the vol down low on my tablet and let it play the sound track to Witcher 3's addon Blood & Wine. Its the sounds of Toussaint. Such a remarkable music and human voice tone sound track. Tracks can have ambient background sounds of the area or towns along with hums and light voice notes among the music. I love it so much and it has stuck to my head since finishing the game many months ago now.

I started playing Othercide as my next game to finish. Now I hear the song on the game's home screen in my head every so often. 50% of the time I give in and play another round. It's like the game is calling me with her siren sound. It doesn't help that now the game is starting to "click" with me so I don't myself rage quitting.

Many moons ago as a youth I participated in Boy Scouts, and there was a mountain man festival we went to.
Now, nobody who looked at me would ever describe me as a mountain man. I was a skinny malnurished dork.

But, there was a competition at these places, Events includes things like fire building, knot tying, axe throwing, tall tale telling, archery, etc. And, I did really well at those things. Despite being barely able to do a single pushup, and completely unable to climb a rope, I won the mountain man competition twice over hundreds of other scouts. I took home two tomahawks as trophies,

Some years back I used to throw them at stumps and such, I have some talent in that area. But I have never been to a axe throwing place.

I still have one of them. The handle is so old I would never use it for anything now, its just a showpiece.

But its poof. I don't like camping. And when people call me on it, like, "yeah, you've probably never experienced 'real' camping" I can show them my tomahawk as proof that I have in fact experienced camping, real camping, I have plenty of stories about camping. And now that I am an adult, I never have to go camping again if I don't want to.

You would be into Glamping. A glamper.

Glamping is a portmanteau of "glamorous" and "camping", and describes a style of camping with amenities and, in some cases, resort-style services not usually associated with "traditional" camping.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:24 am

KKBlue wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2012 11:14 am So excited! A woman was wearing a sequined Little Miss Sunshine top in Germany! When I get back to the states, I'm showing off my new avatar!

Any chance you're a Buffalo Bills fan?

HA! Isgrimnur, not a Bills fan BUT have been seeing "Little Miss" popping up with rebranding of sorts. My husband actually asked to see my forearm and suggested I get a Little Miss Sunshine on there. He likes encouraging me about tattoos, designs, and placement but doesn't seem to want to get any of his own.

Mr Men

Watched Mad Martigan help save Elora Dannon last night.

Hadn't seen that since it was in the theater, I don't think.

Been a while for sure. 34 years actually. Sure doesn't seem it.

Was staring at the sky this morning admiring the one wispy cloud up there when I saw a jet waaaaaay up there with a single short contrail. The jet was small too and man was it moving . Ive never seen a jet moving that fast. Sure wasn't commercial. It zoomed across the sky at some serious speed. Neat.

I realized while in the bank this morning I had forgotten a paper I wanted to drop off at another stop at home and muttered out loud that I had forgotten it . I then told the lady its ok saves me a stop and I get home faster . She said thats a good way of looking at things. I chuckled....Im living my life with this philosophy these days and it has improved me and my health.