Today I learned that a last name like mine (Harris Friel) is known as a double barreled surname.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name#British_tradition

I will be sure to use this information the next time they can't find my prescription at CVS and try to shame me for not allowing myself to be absorbed into patriarchal standards of naming conventions. 

MORE
11/22 '19 9 Comments
Seriously. The Spanish like to string all their family names together too. It's by no means new, and also, it's 2019? Have they been living under rocks?

Thank you for alerting me to Leone: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone_Sextus_Tollemache

I must share this info with my Names You Might Enjoy group.
Heh. I found this out by reading the Wikipedia entry for Sacha Baron Cohen. His grandfather added “Baron” to the surname.

By the way, this is exactly what goes through my head every time someone insists on hyphenating my last name or not leaving a blank space in between. Fucking databases, I swear to Dog.
Ooh, and I found out that OPW won’t force me to hyphenate! I can have blank spaces in the name field! YAY!
You're welcome!
You have MORE IDENTIFICATION. It should make it EASIER.
YES, AND...
Here’s where it gets ugly. My insurance company says that my last name is Friel, because I get my health insurance via marriage to Vince. My identification has my entire full name. Pennsylvania is awesome and let me do that, out of exhaustion and rage over the whole thing. But, my first and middle name are printed on line 1, and my last name on line 2, so when most people read it, they assume that my middle name is my last name.

So, when my prescription is filled, my doctor’s office says my surname starts with an H, but the pharmacy files the prescription under F. And because my middle name starts with a Y, they always start on the wrong foot with, “we don’t have anything with that name.”
Wow. I don't have your level of suffering at all. Two of my kiddos do have double middle names, spaced with no hyphens, so occasionally someone tries to take the second middle name and hyphenate it with the last name [giant eye roll]. It's mostly airlines that screw it up, which normally doesn't matter much until we're traveling out of country with a passport (which has the correct order of things). Then the airlines have to reissue the whole ticket. Big nuisance.
May your kids never, ever, ever, have to apply for SSI. That is where they git ya.
Well... eventually they'll turn 65... I hope.
 

My trusty steed Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin was killed by a wand of death.
Then I managed to explode my bag of holding, my two primary weapons, and quite a lot of other useful things.
And Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin-Too was disintegrated by a black dragon!
So I limped onward, no longer a mounted knight but determined as ever.
"The guardian Angel of Lugh will not accept the name Cool Hand of Lugh."
I went to my reward with 3285282 points, happy just to have made it.

MORE
11/22 '19 7 Comments
O my stars, they are still iterating on the game
They are iterating both it and several wildly differing variants:
* nethack the original, v3.6.1 and counting.
* unnethack - kitchen sink of additions, harder than vanilla, very actively developed.
* Slash'em/Slash'em Extended/SlashThem - I play this one a lot, basically 3.4.3 with new roles, races, monsters, artifacts, longer dungeon, shorter Gehennom. Kinda hard. Playing as a Vampire wizard is super fun. Playing as a Doppleganger is OP AF. Dev seems stalled for most of these subvariants.
* dNethack - new and actively changing as we speak, new mechanics for almost everything, WAY harder monsters, new roles that are basically impossible to ascend, Elbereth replaced with a series of Wards and spirit bindings that convey an intrinsic but only if you don't break conduct...easily the most complicated and difficult of the current variants. You can play as an android or a convict or a time traveler from the future who doesn't know why he has all these crazy plasma weapons etc.
* FiqHack - mostly UI and QoL improvements...didn't do much for me.
* GruntHack - intended to be harder; can't say, never tried it.

I think that's the major ones? AceHack and NitroHack got folded into one or more of those...NetHack4 became FiqHack I think...NetHack Fourk might be active.

Still a great (set of) game(s).
https://alt.org/nethack/hterm/ has NetHack 3.6.2, using a very convenient interface so you don't have to download or install anything. But now I need to play a time traveller? Aw, man.

https://ascension.run/hterm/ appears to have many of the variants Paul listed.
Hm, getting unstable connectivity to that variant site, it seems.
OH MY STARS AND GARTERS I can watch random people play nethack this is so much better than playing nethack
Oh, and you can send them a scroll of mail with your kibbitzing thoughts. That's fun.
 

Printed tote bag. 

The design I wrote with a calligraphy brush then turned it into a printing block.  The ink is regular artist acrylic white, ultramarine and primary magenta with some thinned retarder to make it more fabric compatible. Mixed into a gradient on a glass palette with a wide brayer. 

MORE
11/22 '19 1 Comment
 

Marvin Gaye's isolated vocals from Heard It Through The Grapevine.



MORE
11/21 '19 5 Comments
Flawless. Flawless. Without flaw.
Thank you for this.
This gives me chills. Actual chills. Sigh.
I too love this. In fact, I love it so much I wish there was a version sans the reverb.
Now see, I LOVE the fact that you can so clearly hear that magnificent EMT 140 Plate doing its plate thing here. In the full mix it disappears almost completely, there is almost always a horn stab or backing vocal that runs over the decay. Here you can hear the whole tail, and that shows what it's actually adding to the body of the vocal, at least to my ears. A little emphasis on the high end, some spatial depth obviously, a thickness to the falsetto parts...and yeah, a slight metallic sheen, but come on. That's how the song has always sounded. If you love this vocal performance, part of what your ears latched on to was the EMT 140, it's inseparable.

Plate reverb drives me crazy. I can't dial it in on instruments for shit (plus/or digital algorithms are shit for replicating a giant sheet of metal). It's useless to audition a single sound on a plate algo because the whole point is how it affects where things sit in the mix. Which is what makes it so great for vocals. Which I never record. So.

Anyway this way awesome, thanks Ray.
 
 
 
 

From time to time I get drafted to cook Thanksgiving dinner for some friends who are destitute when it comes to culinary arts. This year's menu:


Crown roast of brined pork loin
Mashed potatoes
Cranberry walnut sausage dressing
Green bean casserole
Corn pudding
Yeast rolls
Gravy
Apple cranberry chutney

Dessert will be a cornucopia of pies, provided by the hostess.

Of course I have to make the epic quest to the Buy N' Large a week ahead of Thanksgiving to lay in most of the supplies for the feast. Assuming I survive, the meal should be memorable.

MORE
11/18 '19 4 Comments
Delicious and impressive! I've never ever seen a crown roast of pork; it sounds like something you would go on a quest for, like the sword in the stone.
I've done a traditional turkey and trimmings and a prime rib for this family's holidays. Basically, I'm working my way through the top tier cuts of meat.
I'm a fan of prime rib for Thanksgiving. This meal sounds amazing and I'm wishing I could be there! Good luck. :)
 

"You're so thin."

I hear that, or Beloved's quips on me being a tiny wee thing, frequently. Pointing out the enormous bags of fat that depend on my chest (G cup in British sizing), or the fact I'm about as tall as an average man my age, doesn't deflect from the fact that I am shorter and considerably thinner than most of the people I spend time with, thinner than woman-bodied people of my age as well.

Doctors have commented favourably on me having a fairly low body weight and decent overall fitness level. I don't get told to lose weight when I have a completely unrelated condition. Some overweight people are not so fortunate, even if when weight on a chart is not correlated to poor overall health.

I don't work at being thin. I don't try to starve myself and my exercise routine is specifically designed for strength and endurance, adding bulk in the form of muscle. I hear that I'm lucky, or that I won some kind of genetic lottery.

I don't try to starve myself, but sometimes my biochemistry and past patterns do. When I'm depressed (clinical, not having a sad time so much as a flat affect, anhedonia and impaired executive function), I forget to eat until I figure out the grey-out from low blood sugar and the severe pain in my gut are signs my body needs fuel. I've been discouraged from being seen and heard, and what better way than programming myself to insubstantiality?

I eat what tastes like food, which is mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meats. Sweet and higher-fat foods I will sometimes nearly inhale when I've been exercising intensely, but I don't reach for them. I don't like the way my body feels when I eat starches, so I eat little in the way of breads, cakes, cookies, potatoes, and the like. When I drink juice, it's diluted usually at least 3:1 with water because it's cloyingly sweet.

I've been through financially difficult times. My response to not having much money for food is typically to not eat at all or ro eat less, not to reach for filling (usually starchy) foods. I haven't built up a layer of fat, except in the chesticles when hormones had their way with my body.

I don't drink alcohol. I used to. I don't like the sensations and altered consciousness that intoxicants induce. I tried edibles once in the past year and they're not for me either. Booze has a lot of calories.

One of the ways I calm my mind is being physical. Walking, working out, to a lesser extent singing. It's a rare week that sees me average fewer than 10,000 steps a day in addition to daily stairs (9th floor) and exercise (4-6 times a week). The activity burns fuel and raises my base metabolism so I need more fuel to maintain function.

I don't manage my pain well. I'm working on improving here, but even as I type this I have two hips that are searing their ache into my awareness. When I'm in pain, what appetite I do have is greatly diminished.

The size I am is a part of me that I don't put any effort into. It simply is, like the colour of my eyes. Yes, they're really brown. I'm not virtuous because I'm kind of skinny.

People who are fat to any degree are not lazy or bad. I find my programming telling me they are sometimes, which is its own kind of disturbing. If you notice me acting, speaking, or writing in a way that implies fat people are inferior, please thwack a portion of sense into me by whatever means you prefer. Preferably consensual.

Here endeth the sermon.

MORE
11/15 '19 2 Comments
There's no easy way to put this sermon into conversation, though, is there? When my dad gets complimented for fitting into his Army uniform from over 50 years ago, what can one say?
If I were in high spirits, I might respond along the lines of "I'm a bigger man than I was fifty years ago, but the fit of my clothes doesn't show it." Or hauntingly, "I wish I could forget what I went through when I wore this uniform daily."

I think it's harder for a man and an elder to turn a well-meant compliment on being fit and thin into the start of a conversation on weight and health.
 

I'm working on an article about bullet journaling for podcasters, specifically about handwriting vs. writing on a keyboard. I came across this James Pennebaker guy, and his research into the therapeutic value of writing. I'm linking to Wikipedia instead of a more credible resource because, as I write this, I have something like 40 tabs open on my computer right now, and this bit of info felt most important to share: 
"These results have hatched further studies, numbering over 200. One of these went on to strongly suggest that expressive writing has the potential to actually provide a 'boost' to the immune system, perhaps explaining the reduction in physician visits. This was shown by measuring lymphocyte response to the foreign mitogens phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and concanavalin A (ConA) just prior to and 6 weeks after writing. The significantly increased lymphocyte response led to speculation that expressive writing enhances immunocompetence. The results of a preliminary study of 40 people diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder suggests that routinely engaging in expressive writing may be effective in reducing symptoms of depression."

What I can't figure out from this is whether or not the study participants wrote using pen or pencil and paper, writing longhand, if they typed, or either. 

MORE
11/11 '19 6 Comments
I'd also like to know if they accounted for wanting to write when feeling better, versus the depression being lifted by writing. Also, do any of these people experience difficulty writing while in a severe depressive episode? A stifling of creativity?
They did. Basically, they had to write whether they felt bad or good. As I seem to recall reading about this, it was one of those "hey, university student, show up at this office and get paid to participate in a study."
"okay."
"show up at this office for x number of minutes a week and write in this journal about a particular traumatic event that happened in the past."
"Okay."
"oh yeah, and take these tests."
"okay."
"and make sure you write about your feelings."
"okay."
You know, this kid. https://youtu.be/1AtrI9PoiBQ
"Okay." *snickers* .....taint

That was unbelievably accurate. And fun. Yay, Benedict Cumberbatch.
I had to look up why he said “safety” after he farted, and Urban Dictionary did not disappoint in adding a new layer of delight to that sketch.
I feel like I need to test this out on my brothers. 😂
I'm going to start doing that to Vince.