Real Life and What's Happening...

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Leaky valve on our hot water cylinder. I'm glad I spotted that early. It cost money I didn't want to pay, but a fraction of what it would have been if we ignored it for too long.
 
Leaky valve on our hot water cylinder. I'm glad I spotted that early. It cost money I didn't want to pay, but a fraction of what it would have been if we ignored it for too long.
Yea, cleaning up after a burst water heater is a bitch.
 
booked tickets for my son and I to go to Japan next year early april, during his spring break and during cherry blossom season
Maybe you can answer a question for me. Every day, the Mrs watches YouTube videos where people pet and play with stray cats in Japan. These strays are so incredibly tame, polite, and healthy compared to their American counterparts that it makes me suspicious. Is Japan really such an awesome cat-friendly place that strays behave like well fed and happy housecats?
 
Maybe you can answer a question for me. Every day, the Mrs watches YouTube videos where people pet and play with stray cats in Japan. These strays are so incredibly tame, polite, and healthy compared to their American counterparts that it makes me suspicious. Is Japan really such an awesome cat-friendly place that strays behave like well fed and happy housecats?

I have no clue, but I will look around for them! I assume it's true, because the Japanese are incredible polite and healthy compared to their American counterparts.
 
So, today found out that through a legal loophole, I can get a Lordship title by purchasing a square foot of land in Scotland.

Doing it.

Pretty soon I will be Tristram, Dark Lord of the Peat Bog.

Time to order new business cards
 
My girlfriend is buying a house. Since it's a 30 year mortgage, I am probably going to be helping her pay it for the rest of my life-- and if I'm successful, maybe even afterwards.
Okay, I didn't parse that too good. If you are sucessful you will continue to pay for the house after you die? :-)
 
While the library has been closed to the public, staff hours have been M-F 9-5. I've never had a M-F 9-5 job in my life before. It's nice!

We reopen to the public this coming Monday, and have yet to be told what our new hours are. You'd think that might be important information for employees to have... (I know my boss is just as in the dark as we are, but the upper administration must know something).

Oops, just realized I never hit "post" on this when I wrote it a few days ago, whoops.

Update: It is 4:10 PM on Friday. We close at 5:00 PM today. The library is closed this Saturday and Sunday. We have still been given zero information about what our hours are next week. I'm choosing to find that hilarious, because otherwise I would be furious.
 
Okay, I didn't parse that too good. If you are sucessful you will continue to pay for the house after you die? :-)

You parsed it correctly. If I'm successful, my work will continue generating income after I am no longer around to collect it... at least for a little while.
 
And how much of that is still around for people to see?
My impression was "not much", what with the lack of written tradition, permanent architecture, and, you know, the whole genocide thing... but I freely admit being ignorant of the matter.

Actually the Aztecs and Mayans both had a sophisticated written traditions but much of it was purposefully destroyed and what does exist we're just now starting to understand. Lots of architecture also remains.
 
booked tickets for my son and I to go to Japan next year early april, during his spring break and during cherry blossom season

Osaka? Always wanted to visit it affer reading Tanizaki's masterpiece The Makioka Sisters. There is also an excellent film adaptation by Ichikawa.
 
Osaka? Always wanted to visit it affer reading Tanizaki's masterpiece The Makioka Sisters. There is also an excellent film adaptation by Ichikawa.

we don’t have a full itinerary planned yet, but we fly in/out of Haneda. Currently I think eating sushi and ramen, as well as riding the Shinkansen are what’s on the list

in fact, making him go dig up some things to do seems like a good ”school” activity today.
 
we don’t have a full itinerary planned yet, but we fly in/out of Haneda. Currently I think eating sushi and ramen, as well as riding the Shinkansen are what’s on the list

in fact, making him go dig up some things to do seems like a good ”school” activity today.
Kyoto might be a good side-trip from Osaka as it's only half an hour or so on the train. There are loads of old temples, parks and palaces there as it was the old Imperial capital and didn't get bombed in WWII. Take a look at Ryoanji, for example. Also, ponds with carp everywhere.

The ziggurat-shaped shopping mall next to the main train station has a large food court in the basement level.

See also: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
 
My wife and I have been married for 19 years today! She also tested positive for COVID yesterday. so aha ha haha. Anyway I guess we'll just watch movies in our living room and order in food.

Luckily I have a job that I work from home already, so quarantine doesn't hurt me the same as it does a lot of others.
 
I hope your wife is OK; it really is a roll of the metaphorical dice whether C-19 hits you hard or soft at the moment.

Look after her, seek professional medical help if you feel any concerns. Good luck!

And congratulations, it was our 17th Anniversary a week or so back...
 
My wife and I have been married for 19 years today! She also tested positive for COVID yesterday. so aha ha haha. Anyway I guess we'll just watch movies in our living room and order in food.

Luckily I have a job that I work from home already, so quarantine doesn't hurt me the same as it does a lot of others.
Nasty. Hope she gets over it well!
 
My wife and I have been married for 19 years today! She also tested positive for COVID yesterday. so aha ha haha. Anyway I guess we'll just watch movies in our living room and order in food.

Luckily I have a job that I work from home already, so quarantine doesn't hurt me the same as it does a lot of others.
Congratulations! I hope she makes a full and speedy recovery.
 
Actually the Aztecs and Mayans both had a sophisticated written traditions but much of it was purposefully destroyed and what does exist we're just now starting to understand. Lots of architecture also remains.
What he said and more. First a Spanish priest make it his life's work to destroy all Mayan writings he could find. Second for decades the lead scientific authority on Mayan culture decided they just weren't an evolved enough culture to have a phonetic language so he squashed all significant research into the area. Only when his ascendency passed did we get good research into the language.
 
Actually the Aztecs and Mayans both had a sophisticated written traditions but much of it was purposefully destroyed and what does exist we're just now starting to understand. Lots of architecture also remains.
Writing traditions existed throughout the whole Mesoamerican culture area. In fact, one of its defining features is the presence of writing systems. Most of them didn't use fully developed alphabets, except for the Maya, so reading them is a matter of contextual interpretation rather than translation. A number of particularly nice Mixtec prehispanic documents (codices) survived the colonial destructive fervor.

The Mixtec or Ñudzahui are a relatively large indigenous group traditionally living in the Mixteca region in present-day Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero.

854_03_2.jpg

The marriage between Lady 3-Flint and Lord 12-Wind at the Hill of the Cicada - possibly present-day Monte Negro, near Tilantongo. Codex Zouche-Nuttall pls. 19-20 (detail)
 
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We just reopened the Swedish RPG site I've been working almost non-stop with since last Monday. We used the down-time to merged the previous forum, from 2000-2014 with the posts and PMs with the one that was used 2014-present, then moved it to the same software as the Pub is running.

I've been working on those migration/merging scripts for quite some time, and had the scripts almost completed. So nice to finally get it done, and I can actually start thinking about running a game over the net with a good conscience. :smile:
 
We just reopened the Swedish RPG site I've been working almost non-stop with since last Monday. We used the down-time to merged the previous forum, from 2000-2014 with the posts and PMs with the one that was used 2014-present, then moved it to the same software as the Pub is running.

I've been working on those migration/merging scripts for quite some time, and had the scripts almost completed. So nice to finally get it done, and I can actually start thinking about running a game over the net with a good conscience. :smile:
Congrats. You should put a link to the site in your sig for any Swedes that show up here.
 
we don’t have a full itinerary planned yet, but we fly in/out of Haneda. Currently I think eating sushi and ramen, as well as riding the Shinkansen are what’s on the list

in fact, making him go dig up some things to do seems like a good ”school” activity today.

Got'cha you mentioned cherry-blossoms and Osaka is famous for its cherry blossom viewing.
 
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Been back at work for a few weeks, but today is our first day back where we're open to the public. It's been kind of intense, but not in a bad way. We've had a lot of changes to the way we do things, which is an adjustment for staff as well as patrons.
 
Writing traditions existed throughout the whole Mesoamerican culture area. In fact, one of its defining features is the presence of writing systems. Most of them didn't use fully developed alphabets, except for the Maya, so reading them is a matter of contextual interpretation rather than translation. A number of particularly nice Mixtec prehispanic documents (codices) survived the colonial destructive fervor.

The Mixtec or Ñudzahui are a relatively large indigenous group living in the Mixteca region in present-day Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero.

854_03_2.jpg

The marriage between Lady 3-Flint and Lord 12-Wind at the Hill of the Cicada - possibly present-day Monte Negro, near Tilantongo. Codex Zouche-Nuttall pls. 19-20 (detail)

I also heard on a BBC podcast about how the Incas/Andeans used (and still use!) a complex knot system called quipu to record census, taxes and other data, stories, history, mathematics, etc.
 
Got'cha you mentioned cherry-blossoms and Oska is famous for its cherry blossom viewing.

we are going to be there the first week of April, right in the middle of peak time apparently.

for "school" today, I had my son do some research on fun things to do in Japan. First one he picked was Arashiyama, the bamboo forest down there by Kyoto, apparently with monkeys. so we'll be going there for sure. very excited.

getting him working on some japanese pronunciation as well
 
See also: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Aw man after we saw that documentary I wish I could visit that restaurant. Ramen Heads was another good food documentary.

Judging solely from a few blogs, documentaries, and various YouTube suggested by the wife, modern Japan seems like a wonderful place to visit or even live.
 
Kyoto might be a good side-trip from Osaka as it's only half an hour or so on the train. There are loads of old temples, parks and palaces there as it was the old Imperial capital and didn't get bombed in WWII. Take a look at Ryoanji, for example. Also, ponds with carp everywhere.

The ziggurat-shaped shopping mall next to the main train station has a large food court in the basement level.

See also: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Thanks! We have no idea what all to do. It’ll all just be “what is new and crazy”. We have a week or so and I already feel like it’s not enough.
 
I also heard on a BBC podcast about how the Incas/Andeans used (and still use!) a complex knot system called quipu to record census, taxes and other data, stories, history, mathematics, etc.
Amazingly, the Incas managed to run their particularly large and stretched-out empire, the largest in the world, without any form of writing, just the quipu. The Andean culture area is also riddled with archaeological sites, but has been far less thoroughly surveyed than Mesoamerica.

Addendum about Mesoamerican prehispanic written sources: only the Mixtec codices and a few Maya ones are of actual prehispanic origin. Codices from other regions in Mesoamerica were made during the early colonial period, though some of them are copies or recounts of prehispanic ones.
 
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Actually the Aztecs and Mayans both had a sophisticated written traditions but much of it was purposefully destroyed and what does exist we're just now starting to understand. Lots of architecture also remains.

I know about those, but my original post was talking about the native americans in the northern part of the continent i.e. modern day USA and Canada. As far as I know, they didn't have a written language but as I said, I'm certainly not an expert on the subject.
 
I know about those, but my original post was talking about the native americans in the northern part of the continent i.e. modern day USA and Canada. As far as I know, they didn't have a written language but as I said, I'm certainly not an expert on the subject.
You are correct. Mesoamerica is the only culture area within the Americas where writing systems developed pre-contact. Within Mesoamerica only Maya writing can be considered a fully developed alphabet. Early examples of hieroglyphic writing have turned up in several places outside the Maya area, such as the Zapotec and Olmec regions, and some sites belonging to Izapa culture. Notably, Epi-Olmec writing (300BC-600AD), like Maya hieroglyphics, has been deciphered.
 
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