Message in a bottle adventures

A friend posted a photo of a USB memory stick in a bottle with the caption, “The modern day message in a bottle”

My thoughts were well that is interesting and I liked the image of a bottle on a sandy beach, ocean in the background with the modern device inside the bottle waiting for anyone to open up the secret messages inside.

Then I thought well water would destroy the memory stick. Then I thought sealing wax like on a wine and booze bottles would fix that problem and that would have made the photo look even cooler if the person taking the photo had thought of that little addition.

Alas they did not. Still it was a good photo.

It also reminded me of when I was kid. I grabbed a coke bottle back when they were made of glass and not the thin glass that they are today, it was thick ass glass that took a beating. For some reason there were corks lying around the house too various sizes and shapes and I found one that fit the bottle.

I then wrote a note in the bottle saying that I was this kid living in this particular town, going to this particular school, what I liked and if this message was found would you please, please, and probably threw in another please for good measure and as I was a kid I didn’t think it would be annoying to write please so many times in a row, write me back. I included my address as well.

Which in retrospect probably wasn’t really all that smart because and today everyone would be like WTH dude, do you want a stalker to come kill you.

Admittedly that isn’t very high on my list of things to get done in my lifetime.

So thinking ahead I put my letter in a plastic bag in case the bottle leaked and like the photographer didn’t think to seal the bottle in wax at the cap point. I was a kid though and while we had corks lying around we did not have sealing wax, so there is that in my favor.

Then once I had my message in the bottle I ran down to the town bridge which crosses the Cheat River. It was raining and the river was up and moving very fast. The water was brown with dirt and stirred up silt, and for what ever reason I tossed the bottle out as far as I could, because dropping it straight down seemed less dramatic I suppose.

It was dark and raining and I couldn’t see the bottle any longer a second or two after it left my hand. I don’t think I even saw it hit the water it was a very exciting moment. But from there the bottle was out in the world on its’ own waiting to be found where would it go, how far would it go. The excitement lasted for a few days and my daydreams of where the bottle might actually end up filled my head.

Well technically it could have possibly made it to the Gulf of Mexico
The progression would be from the Cheat, to the Monongahela to the Ohio River to the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico… to the whole wide world

Well to a kid probability means squat and that bottle had a great chance of making it to anyone in the world who might be near a body of water.

The reality is that the bottle survived and made it a pretty good distance and made it to the second river in that chain to the whole world and as luck would have it a kid found the bottle. An adventurous kid who liked to play on river banks like myself, except this adventurous kid was a girl.

I got her letter a few weeks after tossing my bottle into the river, closer to two months. So the bottle just sat there for a while I suppose. And largely I had forgotten about the bottle but the when the letter was there when I got home from school. It was one of those confetti moments when you just explode with happiness.

The girl and I wrote for a while and then we just stopped. I don’t remember why just that we don’t write anymore. This was before computers and easy photographs. So I never knew what she looked like and she did not know what I looked like. Hell we may have met later in life. I don’t remember her name and if the letters still exist then they would be in my mother’s house probably in the attic hard to say. Would be fun to find them if they are still there. I wondered about this person after seeing the bottle photo and thought what her life if like today and does she remember a childhood adventure of finding a message in a bottle on the banks of a river one autumn day.

Because I’ve had success with that little experiment I’ve done the same thing a few other times and tossed bottles into the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and a few rivers here and there. It has only worked that one time. But I have moved a lot so if it did work other times it was after I moved and the letter probably got sent back to the person.

I suppose GeoQuests replace the message in the bottle sort of adventures and my blog to letter box challenge is very much like the letter in the bottle thing. Except that the river this time was cyber space. That adventure continues and it is never too late to jump on board if you want to play as always the PO Box is below. I like to get cards and letters and it makes the spider happy.

I would encourage people to participate in this type of adventure but certainly use so precautions like a PO Box or just and email address that you set up specifically for the adventure. You will be surprised by the amount of excitement it actually creates in your life.

In other news…

Confirmation of the acronym in this last week from an unlikely source so that was fun


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don


PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

Can you say witch hunt boys and girls... I knew you could

So there is a lot of buzz going on about Lance Armstrong and the US Anti Doping Agencies allegations against Mr. Armstrong.

As far as I’ve heard related to facts that Lance Armstrong has never failed any tests from any agency including the US Anti Doping Agency or failed any test given to him by any officials from any race he has competed or for the IOC or for the USOC.

Yet for some reason the US Anti Doping Agency and I think more specifically Travis Tygart the Director of the USADA, continues to blare out “We don’t care what the test results say, we know Mr. Armstrong is guilty of some performance enhancement we just know it.” Not an exact quote but I think the sentiment it correct.

How do you know it? Please tell us how you know this? Show us some facts and not the word of some official or team mate who says I know because I saw this or that. Ok where is the proof of these people’s statements. If we convict people completely on the word of others now every one is going to be guilty of something they didn’t do just because someone doesn’t like them or is just pissed off at the moment.

Then there are the few former team mates who say they saw this or that but didn’t say anything at the time. And why not gather up the used needles if they existed that would have evidence of the substance and probably a small amount of Mr. Armstrong’s DNA. Then you could have just turned it over to a race official but none of that ever happened. No one ever came forward during races and said you know what I can’t support cheating.

Ok so why now after he is retired? If you want your sports to be fair and free of doping and performance enhanced abilities, why are you waiting to come forward when there is no proof in what you are claiming and it is so long after the fact that new evidence can not be drawn in the form of a blood test or urine screening.

Many writers and commentators and Mr. Tygart are saying that because Lance is quitting the fight against the allegations this is “an admission of guilt” on his part, because if he were truly innocent he would fight every minute of every day to clear his name.

Really, would he do that?

If Lance Armstrong is guilty of using performance enhancements he did so in a way that avoided hundreds if not thousands of doping tests? Well if he did use and was able to pass the tests well the secret dies with him or he admits it. You don’t have any proof that he did anything wrong.

However without proof how do you have a legitimate claim to continue to pour allegations out against this person?

The thing about this is that we’ve become so jaded as a society that we don’t want to believe that any one is able to achieve anything great anymore at least not with out cheating the system some how. And there is proof of it every day, not just in sport but in every part of out lives.

In the just recently concluded 2012 Olympics more than a few athletes tested positive for enhancement drugs and doping and there was still a fair amount of other cheating going on. From the badminton court, cycling, basket ball, martial arts and others. A side thought however is getting high on marijuana a performance enhancer? I would think it would be the opposite but hey it’s a banned substance so I get it he knew he shouldn’t have blazed up but did, and was banned

Some of it was the use of drugs, doping techniques, stretching the rules to your advantage, playing for position rather than wins and on and on. Our sports have become breeding grounds for lies and very un sportsmen like behavior. In all of these cases there is proof, there is immediate action taken. It isn’t month or even years later and without proof.

So when some one makes allegations against someone we are likely to believe them and given the number of times that someone has said oh no I didn’t do that and then later says ok yeah I did. We tend not to believe the person saying I didn’t do it. But in all of those other cases there has been some tangible proof of wrong doing.

There has yet to be any against Lance Armstrong that I’m aware of at this time. And this isn’t new for years this has been going on. It isn’t like oh now some years later people are saying Lance is a cheat. No they have been saying before he had cancer, they were saying it during his cancer treatment, they said it before, during and after every race he competed in after coming back and was tested, and tested and tested. Surely years of testing for by so many different agencies he would have slipped up some where along the line and there would be proof of the cheating.

Where is the evidence?

How many years of abuse would you take before saying you know what I’m done fighting with you I quit. Because it doesn’t matter what the truth is, it is what you (Mr. Tygart) want the truth to be that he is a cheater so you will continue to make allegations until when? Well until the person just quits fighting because it is such an expense in time, money, mental state and just an all consuming thing to the person who has been accused.

There comes a time when the fighting just doesn’t make any sense anymore because no matter what the out come there is always another fight about the same thing you just fought about.

He knew he was going to be tested. If I were an athlete in today’s world of drug testing it would be on my mind that if I do well someone is going to test me for something. So of course he knew he would be tested

And again if he is guilty and is able to beat all the tests well then that is something that agencies need to look into in testing athletes and if Lance got away with it, how many others have gotten away with it as well. Derek Jeter just had allegations made against him by an announcer who has chosen to make his money by being an ass hat but will Jeter be put through the same onslaught of accusations now. Hard to say but you don’t need evidence anymore to make someone’s life a living hell. You just need an audience and a few people to listen and pick up the torches and pitchforks.

Also what authority does the US Anti Doping Agency have over any competitions or to remove victories? The truth is they don’t have any authority over any sports but once the agency was empowered by the US Congress, who are all as we know very truthful people without any flaws in their characters, the USADA gave themselves unlimited authority to test anyone who does anything with any sport on the planet if they have competed in the US, plan to compete in the US or may think they might like to compete in the US or for the US.

Can you say witch hunters? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck I’m sure it’s a witch but if says it isn’t a witch it’s a witch and if it says it’s a duck it’ is probably still a witch.

All in all I don’t know what to think about Lance other than to say show the public some proof other than he just doesn’t want to fight with you any more because that isn’t proof that he did something wrong it’s proof of Mr. Tygart has started a witch hunt and that’s all and now that Mr. Armstrong doesn’t want to play any more he is guilty

And I will say this if there is proof turn it over to the Tour de France and the IOC and the USOC and then by all means strip every award the man has gotten but prove it first.

However sadly the USADA has chose not to do this and have taken his unwillingness to play their game using rules they made which really ultimately give them the accusers the most of the power and those accused none. This is fair Mr. Tygart? Well I’m sure you don’t care about fairness you only say you do and the more important thing for you to do is to validate the existence of a money wasting agency which is redundant in every way. All the sports you test athletes for have their own testing, they have there own oversights and they have their own rules and authority to ban competitors you and your agency are not needed and should be abolished. You are a waste of tax payer money, you are a blight on the existence of fairness, and you probably aren’t a very nice person but I’m not sure about that last one but I think your actions justify my allegation.


In other news,

Internet fights between two people are fun to watch… god I love twitter it is better than day time TV


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don


PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

BF3 Premium release rant

So I’m going to rant for this entry, about one of my hobbies. Battlefield 3, which if you are not familiar is a first person shooter FPS video game available on all the major gaming platforms. So if you don't care about gaming you may not want to read this issue.
There are a lot of things to complain about in the battlefield world. Some of them are development problems, some of them are programming problems, some of them are gamer problems and some of them are just problems which I’m not sure who to blame.

My rant is about the developers, programmers, and their marking people. Like many fans of either the franchise or the gaming genre new game generate a certain amount of buzz and excitement and some where along the way the people who make video games figured out if they started having people pre order games then they could save money on manufacturing because they would know how large to make a first run of the game so that they don’t end up with a lot of stock if the game doesn’t sell well after the first few months. It’s a very smart move.

Then they were able to add to games later once they were released with down loadable content (DLC). This saves money because you already have the basics of the game done you are just adding things to an already existing vehicle. Which ,truth be told these were all probably parts that were being developed for the game in the first place but were left out for one reason or another so a lot of the work is already done, but it is programming work and if you can make money on that so be it, which is fine. I don’t have a problem with the game getting a warm up if fact I prefer the warm up.

Then the developers came up with exclusive content which you pay a bit more for but it gives you something that other players don’t have in the game. Which may or may not give you an advantage but it is fun to have if you enjoy the activity and spend any time doing it. It is partly escapist fun so why not give your player some depth of your personality or flavor.

Battlefield 3 is no different than any other game developer out there however they have recently taken a great big whiz in the collective bowl of cereal of their base /core audience.

DICE and EA came out with a premium service which gives those players access to a few things other players don’t have. Some of it helps in game but mainly it doesn’t really it is all just a bunch of filler. But getting to play the games a bit earlier than other players is fun and the premium service was mainly a bundle of the new maps DLCs which were slated to come out over the next 12 months when it was introduced., which was totally worth the additional money to have the game have much more content.

I’ve played other FPS which could have used a lot more DLC which didn’t get any of it and that company is not defunct and they had great games.

So it’s expected by the consumers that the games will be freshened up a bit and it will cost some money.

The whiz in our cereal bowl is that now DICE and EA are making the premium service and all the other DLC and the original game all available for equal too or maybe even a bit less then it was originally sold for less than a year ago and less then 6 months since they asked the original buyers of the game to buy the Premium DLC for just a bit less then they are now marketing the whole thing for in less then two weeks.

To me as a consumer it is a giant F*** you game buyer you mean about as much to us as a speck of dust on our shoes.

You don’t care about the game buyer and you have proven it with that really shitty move. Which really makes the lame premium “bonus content” seem like a double slap in the face, no one really expected it to be more than fluff. Well almost nobody who understands you are in the business to make money from a workable product. Now I’m not sure exactly where making the money stands in the ranking compared to how workable the product is when it is sold but I would like to think the product being the best that it can be is up there slightly higher than the profits and if profits are number two on the list that is ok.

However when you market the “bonus content” as being something to enhance the game and it is a video about stuff that most players have figured out on their own or that many of the Youtube content creators have already explained and explained it better or some other lame thing that doesn’t do anything for the gamer at all. Seriously weapon camo in a gaming system that puts you on a heads up display if you are aimed at or fire your weapon? I mean really how does this enhance the gaming experience? It doesn’t hide us and if certainly doesn’t make the other player shooting at you pause and say oh damn your weapon is so much cooler than mine. In fact they do not notice it a bit.

The thing is they didn’t just give this stuff to you either. You have to do some ridiculously long quest which gives you nothing useful in the game. It is an insult and that our money was just something you expected to get from us and even deserved to have.

Well you haven’t earned that money and you have insulted a lot of gamers and would be willing to be part of a class action lawsuit against the gaming developers for this fraud against the consumers which is really what it amounts to, as the release information was deliberately vague and now offer all the same products for less than the original purchase price it is just shameless and shows the greed that drives businesses to give the consumer less and less for every dollar spent.

I’m not going to stop playing the game but I know I’m not going to buy anymore add on stuff for games and I don’t know that I’ll really buy too many more games from DICE on a first offering because 6 months later it will be half the cost. I’m sure I’m not the only person who fells this way. You’ve really alienated yourselves from a large part of the community and should make it up to your customers in a meaningful way.

In other news.

I’m just not sure what to think about the whole Lance Armstrong thing.



Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

You'll just have to imagine you've been offended or maybe you have...

Picking a jumping in point is almost as hard as coming up with titles. Usually though the writing just happens…albeit a lot of it occurs in my head or I just delete it after a while because even I look at it and say well that is just jibberish.

Perhaps I have the adult onset of attention deficit disorder … well I’ve probably always had it and have adapted specific coping skills which help me disguise the fact that I have this condition … is it a condition? What ever the point is that things get missed in life by the people around us, for example I probably needed glasses years before I got them but I didn’t get them until my junior year of high school. I remember that my technique for taking notes in class was to squint remember as many things as I could write them, squint again locate where I was on the board remember a new group of things and then repeat the process as quickly as possible and hopeful get it all done before the teacher erased the board. Which wasn’t all that often … so my notes were incomplete… therefore my grades were poor… therefore my basic skills in many classes were lacking, putting me behind my peers in many ways.

This happens a lot so I don’t feel slighted at all because of this and if I hadn’t been so introverted I might have said something but I didn’t say anything.

A re occurring dream I had all through school was a myriad of situations were my own insignificance was amplified and I couldn’t wake from the dream. It has evolved from just simple images to actual scenes and situations and my invisible body with voiceless screaming all having no effect on everything around me.

If you’ve read the blog for a while now you know just because it is incoherent to the average reader doesn’t always prevent me from posting what I’ve been thinking, if I can follow it or the chaos has purpose to veil a meaning then I leave it. Most of the stuff that gets the axe is stuff the crosses the line.

Which line…well that line were most people stop when telling a story, making a point, or anecdote and know that there point has been made… I’m a make sure the nail has been driven home and the line gets blurred when I cross over it.

There are a few people who get to see this in action and I’m sure they aren’t shocked to know even with them I don’t always cross the line. I know they won’t judge me too harshly because I’ve gradually exposed them to this with test comments and such. However this is not always the place to tear down the walls or have to defend a comment to the masses. Not that I feel I have to defend anything I say but it is more that if someone makes a comment stating that something I have posted has offended them and I don’t respond to it … it leaves me with the feeling that well perhaps they think I’m ashamed of what I’ve said and refuse to debate it.

No if something I’ve written has offended you… good you know where you stand on that particular subject … doesn’t mean I’m sorry if I’ve offended you and if I say I’m sorry you may not believe me and if you do I may not have meant it and just said it to make you feel superior than me … which is why we tell people they have offended us … because we believe our thoughts, value, ideas are better than theirs as expressed by what ever has us feeling offended.

So rather than not explaining myself all the time I just don’t always write a lot of what goes on in my head.

I’m trying to think of something with minimal potential to offend but still make my point and I’m struggling with it… so you’ll just have to take my word that cake batter isn’t always a reference to cake batter and it may or may not be what you are thinking or it might be both

The point is cake batter isn’t where the train is going to stop …it’s going on to the next stop just like the express that passes you by when you are late.

So that is where I’ve been lately in my blog writing and deleting things because they go too far.

Then there is the next level of things that hit the cutting room floor… I don’t like to share. Why write a blog then if you don’t like to share… because I like to share what I want to share but not everything that can be shared and even though I’m introverted I’m also a bit of an attention whore. But not the all so annoying look at me look at me whore but I do like attention … then I get freaked out a bit by it all too

Yeah I know I confuse myself a lot too. I should probably be a bit more open about all of that and not delete so much stuff. We’ll see but I walk a crooked road to get to a point that isn’t really all that far away from me so it may not happen all that quickly.

In other news…

I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises with Stunt Boy… it was awesome. Joseph Gordon Levitt is better than rather good and freaking stupendous I don’t have the vocabulary to express this man’s ability to bring a character to life and suspend disbelief. The whole revived Batman Trilogy with Christian Bale has been terrific.

Although I think Mr. Bale has been helped along by so many great cast members from Gray Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Cane and all the other roles that have made these films with such incredible depth of story that you a truly pulled in the world of Gotham City and would not be a bit surprised if the bat light appeared in the sky

All the bad guys, Liam, Thomas and Heath made each film unique that are as complete as stand alone piece but not so over done that they don’t fit with the others films

In short if you haven’t seen this film you should.

Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

I still have a the box it came in ... well not really

Because a few high profile people, or rather people who are being profiled for a mass audience, have come out saying that they are virgins it has stirred interest in these people and in many cases ridicule about their choice to abstain or live a chaste life outside of the professions of religion.

I’m not sure exactly why anyone really cares one way or the other if you are getting any or not but it seems to be noteworthy.

However, I’m curious if these chaste ones will choose to talk about it when the finally decide to go ahead and fall off that wagon? Again it goes back to the whole why does it matter and I guess why are those who are choosing to let this information out choosing to market themselves as these pure are the driven snow?

Doesn’t that set you up for further ridicule once you decide that you really like sex and decide the best way to celebrate the new found joy in life is to go ahead and do things in public with a few people.

Seems to be counter productive but I suppose if you make it into adulthood with your virginity in tack that you are only likely to give your V card to the person you marry and they will most likely be giving you theirs on the same day.

I don’t understand it, all the fuss with getting rid of it, keeping it and all the other hubba baloo about it all.

I certainly can respect and even admire the choice for those who decided to live a chaste life. It is difficult to put your mind back to a place where it is all theory and there isn’t an understanding of what it means to participate in acts of procreation / fornication which really are the same thing. Semantics really I mean if you don’t knock someone up when you do it is it still procreation or is it down graded to fornication because you failed to achieve the desired goal. Because if you try and try and try and always fail you could be doing things an awful lot and in your mind you probably really do believe that it isn’t going to work anyway and isn’t that the whole point? How we see it in our minds.

What if you enjoy the procreation is that allowed because it is supposed to be a strictly clinical thing of producing, so there really shouldn’t be any enjoyment in the process.

I’m really trying not to cross lines because as real life super hero guys tells me all the time I go one step beyond where the conversation should stop.

I’m just not really sure where the line is most of time.

I don’t presently think I know of anyone in my personal life who has made a choice to be chaste. I can certain empathize with where they are but don’t think I fully understand it although for myself I’m not a fan of doing things for myself and really see the wrapping things up on my end of things as a failure of sorts, but I don’t want to be chaste even if I don’t enjoy my end of the bargain and would rather focus on the other person having a complete journey and then going a bit further than planned.

Perhaps that is where the line is and I should go ahead and stop there but I’m not exactly sure that it is the line … did I spell hubba baloo right?

So if you have your V card and want to keep it, good on you mate but most people aren’t going to understand why you are keeping it so it’s probably better that you not really share that information not because it is something to be ashamed of but it is no more anyone else’s business as who you start bumping in the night with or the middle of the afternoon, or on the side of a car in a parking lot full of people, or in a park, or in plane at 30 thousand feet. It just isn’t anyone’s business until you make it their business by talking about it all.

In other news

I don’t really have any other news today the Olympics are still on so between my other choices I’m watching as much of that games as I can.



Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,







PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

This started out one way then zagged all of a sudden

Lately nothing has made a lot of sense, not that anything has ever really made a lot of sense. A lot of the time it seems that I’m in a truck with tires without tread trying to go up a muddy hill in a rain storm and the temperature is hovering around the freezing point.

I’m trying to keep a positive outlook about it all which with all the doom and gloom of the political climate, it’s a constant bombardment of negativity.

The demons would have a field day if I would soak them in some booze but better to not allow that all to happen, because they are bad enough as of late anyway with out the assistance of anything artificial to arm them up for a siege against my psyche.

The Olympics have helped some but even they haven’t been as exciting as they have normally been, it’s almost as if some cloud have covered up everything and isn’t allowing any luster to brighten up anything.

Lots of controversy too seems to be much more so than I remember in past games. Although a lot of it seems to be from all the stuff going on outside of the games, with several athletes making negative comments in blogs, tweets and other social media.

It is a unique thing though that the commentators would often not hear what an athlete thought about their comments for days after they had made some poor review. Now the athletes have a vehicle to respond immediately if some one trashes them in the press and to have it heard by as wide an audience at the commentator.

It has unfortunately been the sword against the athletes who have made comments against other athletes: religion, ethnic background or what ever else they have decided to talk about. Which certainly would be dismissed if made outside of the framework of the Olympics, but as “Ambassadors” of their respective nations it isn’t just them saying the hurtful things but their country. So some censorship takes place as to what they can say and what they can not say.

Certainly there are other athletes who probably harbor deep animosity toward other athletes for who they are, where they are from, the color of their skin, and any other difference that the Olympics is supposed to erase and have the sons and daughters of the world only see their competitors as athletes in a common sport.

It is good the nations will put aside their political difference and compete predominately for the love of the games.

Our coverage is like most nations focused mainly on our athletes it would be nice to see others but we have such a large delegation and competitors in nearly every single event that spreading it out to cover all of our own athletes is hard let alone trying to include all the nations at the games.

All in all I have enjoyed everything I’ve seen and still love the Olympics for its ideal and that an effort of peace is so widely attended.

In other news

The exchange has begun




Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

My father and bad socks

So my day began bemoaning the fact that my socks did not fit right. This has been a life long thing with me and my feet. It literally ruins my day, puts me in a foul mood and just disrupts any flow I have going on.

When you consider that a majority of the nerves in the human body end in the feet it begins to make sense that if your feet are not comfy you are not happy.

I guess next time you are having a bad day you may want to change your socks or put on a better pair of shoes. However that concept is not the point of this issue.

For lack of anything better to say and because my stupid socks were messing with my day I decided to share it with the world via facebook and twitter, I didn’t put it on my tumblr though

Several people liked it, assuming that they too have the same dislike of uncomfortable feet and my aunt left a comment about my father not liking the bad sock fit either. I did know that but I hadn’t thought about it in a while and didn’t make the connection this morning during my lament. Another friend said, “like father like son”

However when I read these comments at lunch time, It sparked a chain of thoughts and I spent the rest of the day during my wondering thoughts time thinking about my father and I and how else we were a like or not alike.

Coincidentally the anniversary of my father’s death was about two weeks ago. So I had been thinking about him a lot lately anyway and how it still is hard to believe that he isn’t here any longer.

They say as long as you keep some one in your thoughts they never really die. I suppose that is true and while my father and I don’t have conversations any longer there are times when I think about the words he would have for me or what he might say.

Like all children and parents my relationship with my parents had ups and downs. There were times that we simply did not get along at all and went for long periods without speaking. Other times we got along and bonded in our way.

My father was a very private person who didn’t share a lot of his feelings with people. I am like that. My father liked to discuss politics and current events.

I like current events but see politics as a corrupt and very evil thing and those in politics serve only themselves and themselves alone. I would rather muck out horse stalls than talk about politics the same goes for religion.

The list could go on and on about how we were a like or not alike. Which I could do but that would involve getting into things which are pretty personal and perhaps good reading or perhaps not if you didn’t know my father.

Like my father people rarely if ever saw him drink anything other than coffee. He drank his coffee black and all day long. I do the same. I do get in several glasses of water too but for the most part if it’s liquid and going into my body chances are it is coffee.

My father was a very good artist and had no formal training, at least none that I am aware. He drew houses with a lot of detail and I’m lucky enough to have one of his drawings. He drew houses for people and some of his ideas were built and some of them are part of the house where he lived and died.

I’ve come to peace with my father’s absence in that I know from our conversations that he didn’t want to linger in hospitals and he died in his sleep following a celebration. The celebration was my mother’s high school reunion. She was away on a trip with my youngest brother and he could have easily have not gone but he knew many of these people and was friends with a lot of them even if he had gone to high school in another state.

Everyone who was there later said that he was in good spirits and had a very good time with friends and some family as well.

I was visiting with my cousin in North Carolina the day he died and had tried to call a few times on my way back home but was never able to get a connection.

We had spoken about a week before and I know that that last thing we said to one another was I love you

Glad I ended up sharing my bad sock day because it lead to some better thoughts


In other news…

Stunt boy asked me If I kept all the beer I have in the fridge is on the bottom shelf to keep it from freezing. I said no, I keep it there because I don’t use it a lot and it’s out of the way there.

He says, Oh that must be why my mom keeps hers on the top shelf.


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

I didn't but I may know someone who has...

Confession is good for the soul or so they say. Once upon a time that would have been a large part of a career path I was exploring. I say exploring because there probably wasn’t a “calling” to the priestly life.

However there seems to be echoes of all those things in my life. An affinity for black clothing is not chief among those but confession seems to be.

I’m not so much a fan of confession so to speak and I concede that this is a form of confession or an unburdening of thoughts and a retelling of deeds and my perspective on my part of those actions.

However people have always been drawn to me to tell me what they have done in there lives. They may continue to come and tell me these things over and over again because I do tend to keep them too myself.

Sure running off then to the next person and saying did you know this or that would fulfill a social gap in my life but I enjoy being the only one who knows something. Which isn’t entirely true usually most anything we do is with at least one other person so that person knows and if you tell someone then one more person knows. Most likely everyone involved is going to tell someone. That is why secrets don’t stay secret we like to tell them. I like to keep them. They aren’t tangible but it does mean something to me.

Partly that I value that people deem me worthy enough to bare their missteps, sins, fears, secrets, or just to say something they wouldn’t say in front of anyone else.

I listen more than advise, because it isn’t only my place to advise and it certainly isn’t my place to forgive or redeem but I don’t judge people by what they tell me they have done to others.

They haven’t done these things to me, so it isn’t my place to judge and thankfully no one has come up to me and said oh hey Bee Tee Double U I have a dead body in the trunk of my car and I’m not entirely sure what to do about it.

I’m not sure I would be around to talk about that sort of thing anyway because than that makes you a witness or at least a loose end and that usually means more bad things.

Not that everything that people tell me is bad because it isn’t mainly they are regrets, or fears, or anxieties … I think fears and anxieties are different slightly … sometimes they are sins but according to who or whom?

Certainly not me and don’t get me wrong there are universal wrongs out there but a lot of the things that we obsess about aren’t universal at to their deviance usually the actions are deemed to be unacceptable by some segment of society … ok … I don’t subscribe to a lot of that noise because it is all mostly there to control our actions according to someone else’s ideals … some other person who probably does some of the same things they expect you not to do.
I don’t know why people tell me their stories, their sins, the ethical snags but they do. And as long as they tell me, I’ll keep listening and not telling about it and hopefully they will keep coming back to tell me what’s on their minds.

In other news

Oddly enough Amish/Mennonite women are as appealing as trashy girls… probably a yin yang thing…by trashy girl I don’t mean slut that is a whole other thing… I’ll explain it in another issue.

Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

The spider will be so happy

It has been a while since I’ve written part of that is intentional and part of it is because I’ve not taken the time to sort out my thoughts, such that they are thoughts it’s a big mess in my head and I’m partially amazed that I make it out the door with my head together most days and then sitting down to try to put all of that out on paper…well it looks like a sheet of paper hanging there on the computer screen and the words magical appears as I strike the keys under my fingers. Part of the unintentional delay is that I find it hard to start some times. Come up with a title or just write.

Seriously coming up with the titles to these things are quite the puzzler, you try it just sit down come up with a title and then write… yeah that’s what I thought.

Then if you just start writing what direction do you go in with out a map or title if you will. As you can probably discern I chose to go with out a title today and things are a bit scattered.

You think anyone comes up with the perfect title and then starts out to write exactly that thing, hardly …however the process is not what I’m here to talk about today. I’m not sure exactly what I’m here to talk about it part of the problem still, listening to music I’m not familiar with doesn’t help with the ADD either.

It isn’t that I think what I have to say is particularly important and it isn’t really all that unimportant either, who is to say that somehow the printed versions of this stuff isn’t the last bits of the English language left for some far off generation. I know, right.

The idea that something is ultimately more important than another thing is all relative and probably speculative as well. Sure two things laid beside each other on a given day a certain significance can be put upon one over another but what about in 100 years or a 1000 years.

I think we lose sight of things that are right within our reach by looking too far ahead, behind or to our own perceived importance.

However I wonder about effort and luck and how much the two are completely unrelated but tied together. Vince said that to have luck you have to put in a shit ton of effort, he said it better but don’t know how to spell his name correctly and I’m not looking it up and therefore I’m not doing an exact quote either. Effort, yeah I get it there is the difference.

But really what does it matter because do you know Vince? Did you know Vince? Did you ever meet Vince? I’m willing to bet my customary nickel that it is no to all of those so pay up. But the thing is if I say he said something that perhaps he didn’t say but enough people believed that he did then it could become fact or at least a commonly held truth, just like ships captains can’t really marry people just because they are the captain of a ship. Most people believe that they can, doesn’t make it so. However they are likely to ask you to prove it.

So the intentional part of my delay is that I issued a challenge in the last entry and if you utter a challenge it should be left up for a bit to give people a chance to weight it out in their mind to see if they want to accept a challenge or not. If you are not familiar with said challenge, it is simply to have an intimate relationship via words only never meeting the other person and to so via the written word, ie snail mail.

Well, it seems that I have a willing participant in this venture I’m willing to accept others as well the one benefit to written intimacy is that communication is not bound by exclusivity.

However the responder to the challenge has issued a challenge as it were. I noticed that awhile back that someone had been reading a lot of this from this area. For those not here the area is about 350,000 people, so finding exactly who isn’t really that easy. The site meter gives me all sorts of information, like one time someone from the white house was reading my blog, back in the very early days every day for like a month.

So the challenge back is the offer of a written relationship open to someone who could in fact be standing in line right behind me at the store, in the car next to me watching me sing (badly) to the radio, or any number of place around the area that I might happen to find myself in the company of strangers but one of them wouldn’t be completely unknown to me.

I did have an experience of seeing someone reading my page on a lap top in public once, which was odd. That I could have walked up to them and said hey btw I wrote that, would they believe me or would I have to prove what I wrote was what I wrote. So I didn’t say a thing.

Am I willing to dance on the razors edge, close to the fire and risk that someone may be a bit more in the know about me than I think.

It isn’t a one way street though so I would know things about someone that could be standing right next to me, it adds a heightened sense of wonder to the whole experiment. Admittedly I figure that any one who responded would be from further away like my post card senders from here there and everywhere but not ever from the same town.

So Ms. Red Shoes, I won’t explain the name and only that person will know why they are Ms. Red Shoes I am willing to stand close to that fire. I look forward to your reply in my PO Box.

Again if anyone else wants to write to me in snail mail form the address is below of if you just want to send a post card from your town, your favorite place in the whole wide world or just a photo of your bedroom ceiling (got one of those once) I’ll reply if I have a return address and if you don’t want anything back you can just send what you want with no return address. The spider will be so happy if you do and I will be too.

In other news

Sometimes the truth isn’t really what people want to hear


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

Bet you can't tell that I don't edit... you can really? I really knew you could because it mortifies me but I'm lazy

Seem that many of us spend so much time pondering things which ultimately do not really do anything to change how anything is going to be in the end. Perhaps it is just me, but given that there are so many of us on the planet and I don’t pretend to be the slightest bit original I’m going to guess that it isn’t just me. We want things that we can’t have and the main reason that we don’t have them is that we don’t really try to have them. Some might say this is having a fear of commitment or an unwillingness to put in the necessary work to achieve a desired goal. Recently lots of people have been asking me if I’m in a relationship, I say no which is only partially true. I’m not in a relationship but it is only partly true because all of us are always considering someone that we would like to be in a relationship with. Perhaps you are considering even more that one someone, that person or people may or may not know how you feel about them. You may not even want to ever tell them because you simply entertain the fantasy to fulfill a desire of your own and that in itself is all you need is the fantasy. Fantasy is healthy part of our well being I believe now acting on certain fantasies and end with tragic results. Like say you decide that certain famous person is the person for you and you try to move into their home or you follow them around everywhere…creepy stalker stuff. That isn’t what I’m talking about but there is that line between healthy and unhealthy. We all have our imagined discussions with real people as a way to deal with a problem or how to bring up a particular subject or problem that is bothering us. The discussions never really happen but you will ride the same emotional roller coaster while playing it out in your head. If you don’t think this happens, take a trip to a library, a Barnes and Noble or where ever you get your fiction and you’ll literally find cubic tons of proof that lots of people talk to themselves and have very “real” relationships with persons who may or may not be real. No writer is willing to risk a lawsuit and is not going to admit that a character is based on a real person but we do draw upon what we know or at least observe in the people around us so characters are based upon images and snippets of people but once they are set they are persons to that writer and have lives which they manipulate with their words. We do the same thing with real people where we have these dances of words which play out to achieve a specific result. How much of that actually occurs before it is ever uttered aloud. If you have an argument with a spouse or significant other, how many times have you had that same argument before have it in reality? Perhaps it is just me but I don’t think I’m all that special. Being a romantic, a side of my personality I wish I could smother to death and then burn the corpse and scatter the ashes to the winds, I have these thoughts all the time. However because of the SOFUCT/UFO/ OMGWWWTDTG/ WTFIHLAM I am not currently in a relationship. That and the invisibility thing it makes things a bit of challenge. However something I would like to try to do and encourage others to try is to have relationship based on the sole purpose to know a person like no other person but to never know that person in the flesh. Exchanges of photos are permitted as well as phone calls but arranging to meet in person shouldn’t ever happen. Can you fall in love with a person you only know from their words? You have to be willing to commit to the project and to write at least once a month to the person 12 letters a year. Discuss everything from religion to politics, write erotica about how that person inspires your innermost desires that in that person you see ...fill in the blank. For example a person I do not know whom I am only connected to via a social media and with whom I have had only very limited contact with at this time. I only know this person by what they have posted in the cyber world. She seem interesting, the likelihood that we ever meet is next to improbable on a scale of odd and equal to the population of the universe according the Hitchhikers Guide. The following is inspired by her information She sits alone many nights wishing that she were a bit less abrasive to those around her because she may actually be able to tell the person she likes that she likes them but she has been hurt before but not tragically. The harsh exterior keeps people at arms length so she can size them up before committing to letting them know things about herself. She has a few embarrassing secrets one being that she likes to watch soft core porn and would be willing to experiment with some bondage not because she is trending gREy but because she hurts on the inside and the external pain may release that mental baggage she knows she has carried for too long but it always seems to linger. She won’t trust any enough to open up that much because allowing herself to be that physically vulnerable isn’t something this is willing to risk because it means allowing that person in closer than they ever have been before. She is bawdy and crude to disarm the men so they see her as one of the “guys” or their buddy girl rather than a sensual girl. She doesn’t commit to the daily rituals of the “pretty girls” so her eyebrows are only plucked to avoid having them seem bushy, she doesn’t grow her nails long or know how the paint them but she would like to and the only make up she wears is to hide the occasional blemish and some mascara to make what she thinks are puny lashes at least seem existent. A tube of Burt’s Bees lip balm is the only thing she regularly applies to her lips but not to give them shimmer but because the smell of bees wax is stimulating. Some nights when she is lying alone a had a drink or two she will close her eyes and writhe under the cotton sheet with a decent thread count while she plays out how she would like to be loved. She lays there arms around a pillow wishing she were the one being held and drifts off to sleep still naked and will wake in the middle of the night both refreshed from her dreams but also hollow that she is alone and does not see that changing in the foreseeable years to come. She is a diamond in the rough not meaning that she just needs to wear better clothing or more make up but that one day she will look into the mirror and see the woman that has inspired a few braver men to endure her verbal onslaughts to try to get to know her for her and perhaps for the chance for something more. Maybe she will read this and decide to write to my PO Box… of even If you aren’t her and would like to play along with my experiment the address is as always below. However in fairness I may want to use the letters if I get enough or any for a book at some point … there is no working title. Oh and if you do decide to write please don’t if you are under 18 because this is out there in the cyber world I don’t always know who reads but I don’t need to be sending letters to anyone underage… the Lolita thing isn’t my bag In other news I scratched my eyeball somehow not exactly sure, and no I do not look like a pirate but I have been called one before should be all better soon. Yay Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy. Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood. Ciao, PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

The titles are the hardest part to come up with ...really you try it sometime

So many things going on in my mind right now, it is really hard to focus on anything that I really want to say.

Recently the really big land based hurricane or what ever you call a funnel-cloudless freak of nature storm that is not a tornado and is as wide as your state blows through your neighborhood…yeah really big fucking storm is what I was calling it. This left me unharmed but without electrical power for several days, less than some more than some, but by no means was I in great distress for that period of time.

Although, I was not really prepared to cope with the situation but wasn’t helpless.

So that was survived as much as I needed to survive it. I guess there was that one point it was questionable when I was standing outside and watching as a 40 foot tree was literally blown sideways in the wind that I thought you know being outside probably isn’t the best place to be at the moment. I didn’t really want to come inside and didn’t for while either … oddly enough it is sort of instantly addicting to stand amid the raw power that is nature, eventually I did go inside but I kept going back out in the wind … but that isn’t what I wanted to say, I’m not really sure where this is going to end up… hopefully it’s some place fun but it probably won’t be Pleasantville once we get there

The lack of electrical power did however unleash things in my mind which had been pounding a way out for a while now but with no electronic distractions to keep things at bay they escaped.

Was having a conversation with Mr. Peaches …AKA real life super hero guy who said that I am probably the worst person for me to hang out with and that he hasn’t ever heard anyone really talk as badly about other people as talk about myself.

I just need to find a way to channel my own self loathing into something positive that isn’t really a criminal venture or enterprise … but aren’t we all our own worst enemies and by far the most critical of our own mistakes than any one else? Ok maybe it is just me.

I cringe at some things that I’ve done or not done and if it were possible to die from that feeling I would have left the mud ball long ago.

Now I don’t regret anything that I’ve done…well there is that one thing but that was more of a …how would you say it in precise terms… and really I don’t regret that so much as wonder how was that even possible? Maybe someday I’ll write about it but I think several laws might need to be repealed or abolished … I’ll check on the limitations on some stuff before I commit anything or more to the point admit to any involvement in any activity which may or may not have occurred as far as you know.

The point is I don’t regret anything I’ve done… I’ve thought ill of myself for some of it, even questioned my morals … ok I don’t have morals so much as scruples but I’m certainly not immoral or is it amoral …either way I’m not the devil … just a cousin maybe only by marriage… no I’m not referring to my ex there… she isn’t evil … just would rather I died.

She may even prefer that it be painful.

But these are the sort of things that start the demons jumping around, they are like war drums beckoning them out of there darkened places to come out and echo all that things which I find flaw with about myself.

The things is I realize that I’m not very nice to myself in my mind but I like me really and truly I think I’m one of the top 100 people I know I know about 100 people though so there is that … No I’m not going to tell you where I rank… some days it is higher than others but there is no day that I’ve not been on that list.

I think that thing is that while I don’t regret anything that I’ve done in my life, I say I don’t care what people think about me, but I sort of do, not so much but a part of me does. So I keep things away from people, like if they knew about this thing or that thing what would they say? What would they think? How would that change things?

Really that experience is mine and anyone else that happened to be there at the time so ours not anyone else’s to pass judgment, but they do… Hell I do, I’m no better than anyone else.

In my life I’ve shaken the hand of at least three people who I know have killed another person, intentionally not accidentally killed another person, but they meant to do it and that is only the people I know about. What about anyone else that I don’t know that particular detail about them.

Now I was a police officer once upon a time and in the military, does that make you feel any different about my knowing killers? Should it? Whether it should or shouldn’t isn’t really what matters in the end it is what really happens.

What happens is that we look at the actions of other and assume that because of how we think and feel about certain things this person may have done and that somehow makes that person different now because we know about some skeleton in the closet.

The skeleton was always there, the person is exactly the same as they have been, except that you now know something about them that they didn’t tell you about themselves.

Is an omission or I haven’t told you that yet a lie or just I was waiting until I was sure you wouldn’t change your opinion about me until I told you this thing or that thing.

Is it a betrayal because that first words out of the person’s mouth were Oh Hi My name is Jeffery and I’ve killed a few people … well perhaps not the best example because I guess in a certain Jeffery’s case that was a game changer.

Take killing out of the picture and replace it with any number of so called sins and then weight that person’s worth to you after your knowledge has increased.

I suppose there is one thing I do regret but it is more a case of I wish the cycle of events which transpired had taken a deviation to the left by about 4 inches and that would have made all the difference.

I wish I had a different story to tell about an evening in November so long ago and didn’t have the images of that horror burned in to my mind … was there anything I did that if I done differently would have changed things … could I have said something and made it all better… I’ll say it now.,. I would do it now …what ever to make it all different but I can’t change it now, it is done and you live with it or you don’t

If I don’t share those and a thousand other stories with you does that make me different than the day before or change a single experience we have shared?

It shouldn’t but it does …

In other news

Insomnia you are so cruel


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

Meanwhile on the other side of the planet

Lately my thoughts have been trying to grasp the massiveness of humanity on the earth. Right now I’m sitting in a house typing at a computer listening to some music, (mumford and sons the cave not that it matters) and thinking and I am alone. I live in city of 100,000 people I am related to one person in this city who isn’t here right now he is presumably about 3 blocks away the nearest kinship relation I have beyond that is several hundred miles away. In that distance how many more lives are there what are all those people doing right now

Expand that out further to just the US the third most populated country on the planet over 3 hundred million people meaning we are only one fifth the size of India and a sixth the size of china

What does that mean well if you are standing in a line at a store in the US and there are 5 people in front of you the same line in china would have 30 people in front of you and in India it would 25

Just coming to terms with the numbers is one thing but what are we, all of us humans, doing at any given time.

How many people are doing exactly what I’m doing, a lot because typing is the primary means of how most language is passed on from person to person these days. Listening to music is common, you can hardly go any place in an urban environment and find silence and given humanities current desire to live stacked on one another the population density in urban environments is staggering you would think it would be impossible to be alone.

But I am and so are millions of other people.

Millions of other people are with other people. Some they know some they do not know some are happy, angry happy, in love, arguing and the multitude of things we do with one another

Someone is being born right now
Someone just died
Someone had sex perhaps for the first or last time
Someone just ate something
Someone hasn’t eaten and will probably die of starvation before the end of the day
Someone can’t decide what to wear
Someone has only one set of clothing and they wear it every day
Someone just got hugged
Someone just got slugged
And the list could go on an on and on

In every single minute over 6 billion people have done something all at the same time

Imagine if we could get all 6 billion people to do the same one thing all at the same time

Say that would be to jump up in the air and land … would it be enough to cause any seismic activity?

There is a person in the Amazon who is as far as scientist can tell the last of his tribe. A man who lives alone in the jungle and has for most of his life at some time he had a mother and father and perhaps other tribesmen but for what ever reason he is the last of his people. He is protected, the government forbids anyone to trespass in his territory and he has killed at least 3 people who have attempted to invade his territory.

I know about this person and anyone else who has read about him knows about him but largely most of the world has no idea that this man exists in the Amazon. Are there other men or women like this man that we don’t know about.

What does this man think is beyond the area that he knows and can he even fathom a skyscraper or even an airplane or space travel, submarines and all the other things that we take as common place in our world.

In our world what do we really know is going on in the lives of the 6 billion plus lives that fill the earth

The commonality of all of is that we all do the same things every day, eat, sleep, love, laugh, work and all the things we do there is so much that is the same every single day.
We celebrate the same occasions and mourn the same losses

Laugh when a friend falls and then quickly make sure they are ok but then laugh some more, not to make fun but to share that in life that we all fall down physically or emotionally but life goes on

Cry at the same losses the death of family and friends and other things which cause us sadness.

We all experience rage and ire at the wrongdoings which are primarily the same things there is very little difference in the core things we find to be wrong across all ethnic, cultural, national ,moral and political lines we are really very similar


Right not somewhere someone has kissed someone else and they are in love and it will last a life time but I will never meet them or the children they will someday have together our lives will never cross and most likely they will never meet a single person I know but we can all relate to that couple and the future they will have even without knowing them if you read this you thought about them and I’m sure your thoughts were happy ones and hopeful for people you’ll never meet. They are as real as anyone you know, why do we spend so much time thinking about how different we are in our lives when so much of it is the same

It isn’t even just our time we spend most of our effort and work on things which focus on our differences but how different are we really from one another.


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

My solaris version of things

Recently, I find myself waxing nostalgic about things. Not that there isn’t anything of importance going on in my life in the present. The things in my present life are not really all that terribly exciting predominately due to an extreme lack of finances to fund endeavors which might be blog worthy

Unless you would like to trudge through the things I do for my job which I am sure there are more than a few that would like to know but I am not able to talk about that in a public forum.

I also walk my dog and scoop the cat box on a daily basis, which does sometimes produce some pretty deep thoughts but not so much in the exciting blow by blow recounts of the process

So I’ve been waxing nostalgic, especially about a photograph that some one recently posted of when I was living in Germany while I was in the Air Force.

The photograph is like so many then and today of friends out for a night of drinking and relaxing. The people in this photograph were two girls and another person in the Air Force Security Police. We were off duty

This was evidenced by the boot of beer in my friends hand and our civilian attire.

The girl I was with lived in a town pretty far from the base but not so far you couldn’t get there by car within about a 30 minute drive. Problem one I did not have a car at this point in my time in Germany.

The second problem encountered in this was my work schedule 6 days on 3 days off. The first three days of work were from 3p to 11p then the second 3 days working 11p to 7a. Not a Monday to Friday 9a-5p job. You would have a Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday off then be working all weekend yeah you get off work by 11 p but then by the time you change out of cop gear and get off to the hangouts it would be after 12 and that usually didn’t set well.

The girl and I got along very well but we were both young and I didn’t really understand the best way to talk to women then and added more stress to the situation because of my stress over not having a car and messed up work schedule.

She didn’t really understand the whole you just don’t tell the Air Force you aren’t showing up for work. In fact the military as a whole sort of frowns on that a good little bit.

I don’t regret anything I’ve done in my life but I do often wonder what if I had done things differently at time or wonder how things may have been different if things had played out differently.

Say she and I had been able to work thing out and dated longer and had a very serious relationship. I would have re enlisted remained in Germany. Probably learned to speak German beyond asking for directions, ordering food and a few profanities, as I was part of the deployment team I would have most likely spent some time in Gulf War one, which would have impacted that relationship.

I liked living in Germany so I know I would have remained there as long as the Air Force would have allowed.

I wonder what might have been all from one photograph.

I wonder too what if I could re connect to that person again, sadly the person who posted the photograph does not know how to contact the girl today.

I wonder how has here life been all these years what has she done in her life. She is one of the women I’ve dated that I wish things had turned out differently.

Like in Solaris do we remember things as they were or how we would like them to have been? I think I remember them how they were because I know I wasn’t the best at saying what was on my mind or how I felt.

I remember we broke up and got back together a few times. One of the times we got back together, I saw her out with a German guy she was dating and I wasn’t happy about it. However I got less happy when he hit her, which in turn I grabbed him and hit him and kept hitting him. Which inspired his friends to come to try to jump me and them my Air Force friends jumped in and there was a melee in the bar which was in the hall and the restroom, how it ended up in there I’m not sure but there were about 8 to 10 guys fighting in a very confined space.

The fight ended and the owners asked what had happened, a bystander said that the one guy had hit the girl and that I had started hitting him and then everyone else jumped in.

The owners decided to toss out the other guys and we were allowed to stay. She and I started dating again. Yeah knight in shiny armor stuff but it didn’t last long a few months and then we were back to where things were that broke us up before which were me not talking or sharing how I really felt about this girl.

Perhaps in an alternate time line there is a version of this relationship that worked

Perhaps there is a version that allows our threads to cross again in the tapestry that is living

In other news

Have about half of the new unlocks completed in the new DLC, trying to get the rest but one done today. One of them is going to take some work but some I mean a lot of work. However I’ve not been one to mess around much with the sniper rifles in this game yet and it will force the issue. Should be fun.

In other, other news,

August and everything after is one of the best albums ever recorded.


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

New Battlefield 3 DLC Close Quarters

Some thoughts on the new Close Quarters DLC for Battlefield 3. The 4 new maps are small enough to allow for a lot of gun play with other players but not so small that you get pinned into an area and are then trapped in a particular corner and your team is then at the mercy or the lack of mercy by the opposing team.
The new maps are Donya Fortress- Operation 925 - Scrapmetal - Ziba Tower
All offer something unique in the environments that force an adjustment in game play for each map.
DICE delivered on their billed claim that Close Quarters is death from every angle there are very few places in the maps that you are safe and not open to an attack from multiple angles and or from higher or lower levels on the maps.
The modes of play are Team Death Match, Conquest Domination and Gun Master
Team Death Match on theses new maps is as fast paced as any other map in the BF3 rotation and if you are on the map you are in a gun fight quickly (most of the time)
Conquest Domination – moves quicker than any other conquest mode and players capturing flag points are generally fully exposed or at least partially exposed. So no longer do you arrive on point and have to wonder why the counter is not burning down because there is some player is hidden in some box, balcony or elsewhere requiring the man hunt or a greater number players to begin taking a point. Simply win the gun fight to take a point
However watch out for C4 though a new assignment requires a few C4 kills and grenades are needed to avoid being vaporized while capping you are going to die if you don’t spot the C4, and there are places to hide off burn to ambush those on burn so there is risk from every angle
Gun Master – Love and hate this game mode. Everyone is even with weapons at the start but not as the game advances. I don’t know that I will be playing this game mode much for a few reasons. While the maps are smaller you can go for what seems an eternity without seeing an enemy and there you are stuck with the M443 while you can see players moving up the Gun Master ladder further and further making getting those first 6 kills to get out of the 3 pistols harder and harder.
That said I love the idea of bettering my aim and gun play with a lot of different weapons. Come in late to a Gun Master round and you are pretty much toast pray you find that unsuspecting person here or there and hope you get a head shot because if you don’t you are a blood splatter on the walls.
The Gun Master Game mode has one other flaw in it that while you are still on a team a win only goes to the Gun Master winner and not anyone on that team. This is not a team game mode and should not count in the win / loss ratio statistics and should be changed to unranked as to win/loss statistics.
Sure I’m going to lose games and I do not mind losing but if you are going to only allow one winner and not a team win then make all the players targets and not just half of them. Because really they are not on your team they are on their own team in this mode.
Another thing I do not like about this game mode, either I’m not seeing an enemy for minutes and minutes or I’m getting shots into a player and then some “team mate” pops in gets off that last shot for the kill and gets the kill and my screen shows Kill assist 99… Ok… really? I swear to BOB in one match I had 40 kill assists and was stuck in the pistols for 70 percent of the match because of all the lost kills to “team mates”. Add up the assists if you get a total of 300 or 400 percent of assist points on a gun level, one or two more kills than necessary to advance let those players advance to the next weapon. However I think the easier thing to do would be to take out the Win/Loss statistic in this game mode. Then there is no adding up to kill assist points and there is no negative loss or gain in the Win/loss ratio to players who want to test their gun skills against other players.
Sure this may be called a “stat whoring” complaint. I don’t have stellar KDR or even a SPM rate, I do however have a positive W/L ratio and I work at keeping it that way by playing the objective and working with my team mates whether they are in my clan or just randoms.
My quit percentage is really low, at 2 to 3 percent depending on how many matches I get kicked out of, my internet craps out on me or I spawn into a game and the team is already being spawn camped and is down by several hundred tickets. I’m sorry this isn’t the real military and I’m not going down with an already sinking ship just to keep that quit percentage from going up a tiny bit. So I think removing Gun Master from the W/L statistics is a fair complaint because W/L is a team based statistic rating and Gun Master is not a team based game mode.
I think some of the assignments are a bit steep but not completely out of range but will take some work while others are so easy that you barely need to think about them to unlock a weapon. The AUG is an example of that I was in a high ticket rush match on Operation Metro and had it unlocked by the third set of MCOMs.
All in all I like all the new maps and new game modes, even if you won’t see me in too many Gun Master matches


Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

Project PTFO Team Yesh Bandits

Project PTFO Team Yesh Bandits

If you’ve been following the blog you know I was recently involved in a Battlefield 3 tournament which was a new idea in online gaming to bring the community together. However if gaming is not your thing you may not know about this tournament.

PTFO is Play the F’ing Objective and is an attitude of playing the game as it was meant to be played. Win or lose you play to capture/defend, arm/destroy points on the maps and to work with the other players on your squad/team and to have a fun time in the process.

The tournament paired players who also direct and produce video content on game playi and are posted on youtube /Twitch TV / Machinima with fans of their videos and also the game Battlefield 3.

The tournament was free, as in their was no fee for the players but you have to own the game and put on by the staff of Battlefieldo.com

The number of hours the people of Battlefieldo.com have committed to this project have been more than most people really probably understand. This tournament is on all three platforms of the game PS3, Xbox 360 and PC and involved hundreds of people from all over the world. So planning this was not as easy as sitting in a room and hashing out the details it took a ton of work.

The tournament announced aired in movie trailer format and I was all oh man this so exciting and decide that I would enter but did not really have much hope of wining.

I can not tell you how excited I was when I opened my email on Battlefield.com declaring that I had been selected to play as a contestant on Team Yesh Bandits.

Team Yesh Bandits are the directors Robert the Bruce with Yesh Gaming and mariocarrion with Bandito Gaming. These guys both produce video content on youtube and TwitchTV

I was familiar with Robert’s Battlefield 3 videos but was not with Mario’s videos. They are both of very similar mindsets on game play, that being fair play and playing the game to win while having fun and learning.

Meeting both of the via the online game play and online in game chat has been a good experience and I have enjoyed gaming with both of them.

As the winner of the selection draw I got to practice with these guys for the last week and the other winner Kennykyle2010.

We worked on tactics for the tournament game on attacking and defending two different maps in the Battlefield 3 game in the game mode Squad Rush. 4 players v. 4 players. This game mode allows attacking teams 20 player deaths in total to arm and destroy a target, if successful in the first arm and destroy it opens a second target to arm and destroy also with a total of 20 player deaths. If you arm and destroy both targets your team wins on attack. If the defending team kills the attacking team 20 times without the attackers saving downed players the defending team wins.

Each team attacked and defended two maps for a total of 4 possible points, points were only earned on attacking turns.

It is a very thinking game mode that requires planning on both sides of the game and requires that teams have the adaptability to adjust on the fly to what the other team is doing at any given time in the game and a very small mistake can lead to point lost or losing the game entirely.

We practiced for the week and I noticed a lot of improvement in my approach to the game and gun play. I will be the first to admit that I still have a lot of work to improve.

The main point of the tournament was for fun and to bring the community together for the event and for the directors to produce content from their POV of the game play and experiences meeting other players.

Our match was this past Saturday June 2, 2012 against Team LOL which was a European team, Captained by CHu99y from the UK and Dark Symmetry from the Netherlands and their two lottery players.

Unfortunately on the date of the game Kennykyle2010 had a family emergency and was not able to play. So Yesh Bandits was given another lottery player Maripopoza who agreed to come on board and play with no practice with the team and only a very quick 20 minute crash course on our teams planned tactics.

With that handicap Team Yesh Bandits still performed well and brought a lot of pressure to Team LOL and shut them out of two of their possible points.

Team Yesh Bandits did not score any of the 4 points possible but we performed well and were able to breach the defenses of Team LOL several times but just did not produce points.

With any tournament of this kind where the players are in remote areas from the others playing and all players signing onto a location computer server there will be lag or a delay in the data stream to the players and back to the server. The server we were playing on was a European Server so Team LOL was closer to the server than Team Yesh Bandits.

I’m in Virginia, Robert is in Kentucky and Mario is in New York and I’m not sure where Maripopoza is located. Our other team mate is in Seattle so he was further away than anyone else but did not pjlay. I know the two lottery players for Team LOL were in Europe but not their exact locations, so Team LOL’s distance from the gaming server was much closer than Team Yesh Bandits.

The data stream goes out quickly but there is always delay in getting the stream to those furthest from the servers. The slight data stream disadvantage to our side and paired with our team playing with a player who had no practice tilted the odds in favor of Team LOL.

I’m not saying this to take anything away from Team LOL. They are a very solid team who PTFO in a very serious way. They communicate well and play a very tactical game and were good and tough competitors and I congratulate them with all due sincerity for their win.

All of us on Team Yesh Bandits are happy with our performance and had a very good time and are all extremely happy to have been a part of Project PTFO.

I want to thank Robert with Yesh Gaming and Mario with Bandito Gaming for helping me and being very good teachers and always offering feedback in a positive and objective focused way. I’ve noticed a big, big improvement in my own game play and I am winning gun fights with players in my own clan that had usually out gunned me. I have a very new out look on how to play the game and hope we are able game more in the future.

I also want to thank everyone at Battlefieldo for all the hard work and effort you have put into making Project PTFO a great event and I am so glad to have been a part of this event. I hope you are able to plan more events like this one and hope I am lucky enough to be able to participate again.

Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

The happy ending business

The happy ending business, no not that sort of happy ending but the fah-la-la-la happy ending business, the, and they lived happily ever after sort of thing … this is not my business.

It is a pretty safe bet that people wish my business was the sort of thing that made it all better, but it isn’t that sort of thing … or at least not on the surface of things.

Yesterday another worker compared the work we do to assembly line work and I see his point. All the cases we get have specific things that have to be done and it becomes very much an assembly line mentality. We even say the same things over and over again in documents, meetings, every contact in one case is handled the same as in any other.

The droning machine that we are building isn’t a device, but humanity.

It is easy to fall into the idea that the world is a bad place and nothing ever gets better if all you see is bad.

The whole of the world lies, cheats, steals, takes the easy way, they don’t do what that need to do and on an on.

It never gets better and it never ends.

But it does sometimes get better and it does sometimes end but we just don’t see that part of it.

I’m sure that there are studies that burn out of factory works on assembly lines is higher and the front end of assembly than at the back end.

At the front end it is all the same it never slows down it is just do this and do that but what you do doesn’t make the whole but as you move along in the line it gets better and better … the person who does that last task gets to enjoy the satisfaction of making a product every single time it gets done.

Ask that worker, what did you do today I built 5000 widgets or what ever

Ask that first worker the same thing, nothing important, same shit different day, or something along those lines.

But that person did as much as the last person just at a different stage.

We don’t see the good things happen all that often it’s bad all the time 24/7/365 bad news, on top of worse news, covered in garbage.

But things do change Real life Super Hero Guy works with a kid who was part of the bad news a few years ago… that worker who ever it was who dealt with the same kid a few years ago only knows that kid from then, bad things happening for no reason but this kid is doing better there are still bumps but it’s better

Things change and the widgets we build with the same tools don’t turn into the same end product we just don’t see those people again.

We do see the recalls hey this wasn’t done right the last time it needs to be done over which ads to the bleak picture that people are just bad.

One of those assembly companies has ads now building themselves as good guys but how they are doing it is connected the makers of the products they build that get put into other things …for the builders it’s all well did that but they didn’t see the work they did do any real thing just gets shipped away and you make more. These workers get to see the product and product users in the ads

And at first I thought well that’s dumb why wouldn’t you see what you did or understand how it fit into the end product, but largely you don’t always see how your effort is connected to the next step.

I wrote a thing on interconnectedness back some time ago about how some ditch diggers 40 or 50 are as much responsible for my morning coffee as the bean growers and pickers without them the water in my house wouldn’t be there for me to put in the machine that makes the coffee and the those workers and the cup maker and hundreds of people all for a single moment of ah… now that is good coffee.

I’m sure that wasn’t the circuit board workers thought when he put that together for the coffer maker, you know invisible don is really going to enjoy coffee from this machine of 2 to 3 years before the product breaks and he has to buy the next coffee maker I make for him or the ditch diggers thought, or the potter, glazer, electrical and all the other workers.

My point is while it may not be such a nice picture from you point of view, even the Mona Lisa is just a blob of black or brown up close but take a few steps out and you see that each of the brush strokes builds on another and another and stepping back further the picture because clearer and look at it long enough what may initially seem like a melancholy lady is perhaps smiling a little bit, or you can be envious of her because she can see what Leonardo was doing and it is her secret which you can never know.

Taking the steps back or taking the time to see the bigger idea that is the work and there is a happy ending there some where but it might not be in your life time. Just like light that leaves the sun now won’t get here for another eight minutes and light that we see in the stars was sent when the dinosaurs were on the earth

We may not know what mark we make on the world but we all do in some way change the echo of humanity in some way.



Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,






PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015