Don Edwards

Barring any last-minute major disaster today, I'm going home! I'll be headed hone sometime after this afternoon. Still lots to do, lie dealing with doubled/blurry vision. Squeal like a pig, boy.
Ahem.
Any case, I'm going to order lunch, see if it comes, see if SHE brings something, and take my chances. Talk to you once I get home and feel better.

And it's kind of in the nature of "exploratory" that you may find things you didn't anticipate.
If the stuff that was supposed to be holding the patella in place wasn't actually working, but nothing had happened to cause it to be out of place when the doctors looked - then opening things up for an exploratory surgery could easily allow it to go cottywompus.

In the context where "break a leg" is most commonly said, it doesn't appear to be customary to specify whose leg...

Marshmallows.
And long flimsy slightly-pointy sticks - too flimsy to make decent spears or stabbing weapons though.

 
Natural disasters are particularly inconvenient for countries overwhelmed by man-made disasters. 
 

Careful, if you fix it too much, there would be no one left.

So what I'm reading here is that music geeks are a lot like other geeks when it comes to complaining about media.  To be honest I'm not surprised.

The way I heard it, you take the pot of boiling water out into the cornfield with you. Grab an ear of corn, peel the husk back and take the cornsilk off, then bend the stalk over so you can put the ear in the water.

A fallout of a generation that grew up with and is (overly?) comfortable with technology is an attendant cavalier attitude toward the hazards associated with said technology. I think us old timey tech aficionados have a healthy skepticism for the cutting edge claims we've heard all to often that also all to often have failed to deliver. Thus 'upgrade' does not equate to 'better' for us.
 

At the rate the Russians have been digging old weapons systems out of storage, I think pretty soon they will be looking for that stuff.

The version I heard ended with "Grampa said he'll be ready to go in a few sex."

At the rate the Russians have been digging old weapons systems out of storage, I think pretty soon they will be looking for that stuff.

Ah. But still concerning, and I just realized that this actually makes it more convenient for foreign agents looking for chance spills of vital information. Then again I wouldn't expect them to loiter on Total War: Rome forums hoping to obtain vital information about the latest generation of onagers or siege ballistae.

Around that time I had bigger troubles with the 1998 problem.
Yes. The 1998 problem.
At the time -- July 1997 to be exact -- I worked in a small branch office that served as a connecting point and legal advice for a lot of bigger office. We had a LOT of mail going in and out. I had just finished reading another depressing article about the Y2K problem and my eyes landed on our old and cantankerous postage machine which was very much mechanical all the way through and thought, "Thank God we at least won't be having any year 2000 problems with that." On an impulse I opened it up to see how it worked. And to my astonishment the wheel that stamped out the dates ended at 1997. If we wanted to be in business after new year, we would need that entire wheel replaced. Really terrible design.
So I went into the office of the engineer who was running the place and told him, "Boss, we have a 1998 problem." He replied, "We have a WHAT?" After I had explained he assigned me the job of finding out how to upgrade the darn thing. I soon learned that this would cost so much that we could very nearly buy a brand new machine for that much money and told him so. He got so mad that he assigned me a new job: finding the best possible new machine that would not have this problem. I spent about a week comparing offers and we finally decided on one.
Incidentally, during that I found out that normally people who used our old model didn't find out until just before or right after new year, and were always in a terrible bind as a result. My idle curiosity saved our office a lot of trouble and frantic effort.

Lincoln at Gettysburg:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
 
Trump at a rally near Gettysburg:
“Our nation was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The battle of Gettysburg, what an unbelievable. I mean it was so, was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways — it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow! I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And uh the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor — did you ever notice that? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill, he said. Wow, that was a big mistake, he lost his great general and uh they were fighting uphill. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’ but it was too late.”
It may just be me but I feel Trump's Gettysburg Address kind of lacks a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the original.

Who hurt Susan? Her parents, I think. I'd say her mother did the most direct damage, but it was part of Mom's response to what Dad did so...

And now we know the true purpose of AJ's seemingly-underpowered spell: it gives Dan more interesting-looking outfits to draw.

 
If it worked, Hope built the deck with Pandora's suggestion.
As it did not work, Pandora built the deck.
Haven't you ever been through a change in management?
 

So, I am going to grumble about logistics for a bit.
For large armies logistics are everything. Without supplies they cannot fight. It is entirely possible that they cannot even reach wherever they are supposed to go. This rule is even more important for modern armies but even for medieval or fantasy armies this holds true.
Now Tolkien was completely aware of this and did it right. He had both the strategic and operational scale covered. Strategically in that while Mordor was a terrible place for growing food, Sauron also controlled more distant and presumably more fertile nations who paid tithes in the form of food and valuable materials. Presumably this allowed him to keep large stockpiles of food in Mordor so he could keep his armies supplied. What is more, when he did move his armies he split them up and used different routes before they converged on their target (as seen in the battle for Minas Tirith). This made them much more manageable supply-wise; moving all his troops in a single column would have been unmanageably difficult. (David Weber also did this well in his Safehold series where he not only describes the logistics very realistically but also has them be the deciding factor in at least three or four of the campaigns described.)
Unfortunately -- and this is where my ranting begins -- not all authors are very concerned with this. Especially the Tolkien ripoffs have a tendency to have huge armies but not spend even a moment of thought on where they get their food from. A particularly egregious example would be Robert Jordan's massive The Dragon Procrastinating series in which Totally Not Morgoth™ has a massive army of Absolutely Not Orcs™ and I Can't Believe It's Not Nazgul™. This army somehow emerges fully equipped from a country described as being as about as welcoming as a WH40K hellworld and where you take your life in your hands if you try to travel as much as half a kilometer. There is certainly no possibility of growing food there for even a small settlement, let alone for a massive army on the march. Apparently Totally Not Morgoth™ pulled this huge army straight out of his arse.
There are of course numerous lesser offenders. They typically create a Mordor ripoff which can at least credibly serve as an industrial base for their not-Orcs but where the only vegetation consists of maybe two thorn bushes and a cactus. It is blindingly obvious that this country cannot sustain an army let alone the population needed to recruit it from. It is so frustrating to me and often destroys my immersion, changing my read from enjoyable relaxation into sneering at the writer's ineptness. (I can get fun from the latter, too, but it annoys me when the writer does not even try.)
In short: Armies need food. This isn't hard. Sigh.

Armatures discuss tactics.  Professional discuss logistics.
 

Given that he sees his opponent as a cow, this would seem to be a high steak environment.

Politicians make excellent subjects for beginners’ anatomy classes: they have no brains, no spines, no hearts, no guts, and no balls.

I feel very tired.
Trans visibility day always falls on March 31. Easter happened to fall on March 31. Certain Republican douchevolcanoes decided to pretend to be angered by this and demanded an apology from trans people in a blatant attempt to stir up outrage among their voters.
This is offensive in so many ways. Just to mention a few:
1) They are demanding that trans people apologize for existing. They know perfectly well we won't and plan to use our refusal to further outrage their befuddled and frightened voters.
2) Their pretense that it is somehow the responsibility of trans people that a holiday that falls on a different day EVERY YEAR happens to coincide with an unrelated holiday this year.
3) Their use of a holiday meant to honour a man who preached tolerance and acceptance as a tool to further promote hatred and intolerance.
4) Their assumption that their voters are so blisteringly dim-witted so as not to know how calendars work.
5) The possibility that a number of them actually are that dim offends me personally.
Sigh.

 
Are you irritated that Explorer beat you under the bed and now she won't share?