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Did you ever have a conversation with someone that you were absolutely certain as to which way that conversation would go and how it would end? As in no doubts whatsover! And then it goes in a completely different direction than you had imagined possible? Yeah, me too! :) This tale actually started a couple of weeks earlier when I started noticing some hesitation in the Traverse whenever I'd put my foot down. After considering…

Over the past week, it had become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was going to do what pretty much every minister in Whitehall fears and is one of the main reason to actually be Prime Minister: the cabinet reshuffle. This political game of musical chairs is often instigated by the Cabinet Secretary (a career civil servant and generally the Head of the Home Civil Service which makes them arguably the most powerful person…

I've been thinking long and hard all day about what I wanted to write about for Veteran's Day. As I was running a couple of backups after the hard drive recovery operations earlier this week, I happened to stumble upon this picture that came from a set of slides that my father had taken whilst he was serving in his first of two deployments to Vietnam in 1967. Local man (VC?) Works for himself during…

Today in the House of Lords, His Majesty the King has given the first King's Most Gracious Speech in over 70 years since the passing of his mother The Queen last year. It is not the first time he's given the speech as he stood in for HM The Queen in the previous State Opening in May 2022. This speech is given during the State Opening of Parliament which is the only regular event that…

Three weeks after Matt Gaetz of Florida pushed a one-person motion to vacate the chair and dump Kevin McCarthy out of the big chair at the top of the rostrum in the House of Representatives...the Republicans have managed to find a new fanny to sit in the seat second in line from the Presidency. I'm sure the most relieved person in the room has to be Patrick McHenry of North Carolina who no longer has…

Just when you think you've truly seen it all...along comes something that just defies all imagination that you'd have witnessed it. As I was waiting in Julia's office car park to transfer Alex and the two puppies, I heard a huge crashing sound to my left toward the GoRaleigh bus stop. There's this guy in a high-visibility yellow jacket walking away from the US Postal Service collection box he'd just did a Hong Kong Phooey…

Listen all! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned, by the dust of them all… Bartertown learned. Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two men enter; one man leaves. Dr Dealgood --- "Mad Max: Beyond…

The motion to table (procedurally kill) Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair (vote Speaker McCarthy off his island at the top of the well of the House) just went down in flames. Now we’re on to the main event and if the vote totals on the tabling motion hold, McCarthy will be the first Speaker in history to be put to the parliamentary sword. Minority Leader Jeffries effectively gave the Democratic Caucus response with…

Ever since the leader of the notorious mercenary group "Wagner" led a brief insurrection and marched his forces from the Ukraine through Rostov-on-Don and within 200 km of Moscow, it was only a matter of time before Yevgeny Prigozhin would be made to answer for daring to challenge the authority of President Vladimir Putin. If the reporting by Reuters, the BBC, and now everyone else picking up on the story is correct...it appears that one…

And the irony is that it's been slightly more of a while as I just got distracted with dashing off a novella for a friend who has many photos that she'd like converted to digital and offering my opinions on what someone looking at outsourcing photo scanning might want to consider. Don't worry, I'll capture the guts of that and clean it up for a post in the "Photography Tips" section as soon as I…

I've had more than a little time to reflect upon what family means to me ever since that fateful Friday night almost three weeks ago and the many nights and days of many thoughts but much rarer instances of peace and solace that have followed since the ambulance pulled away from our little cul-de-sac at the end of our street. Truth be told, it seems absurd that what seemed absolutely crystal clear in my mind…

I've purposefully withheld comment on the story the submersible that was diving to the wreck of the RMS Titanic alone ever since the news broke on Sunday that contact had been lost with the Titan which was carrying crew of a pilot and four tourists to approximately 13,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic. Until we knew for certain the fate of the submersible and the crew, I'm sure I wasn't alone hoping beyond…

What on earth is it going to take for me to finally experience the joy of voir dire and being empaneled as a member of a jury of a supposed peer to the accused?!? For the second out of three tries, I ended up getting the thumbs-down from the recorded voice message at the courthouse: Jury Summons DateJuror NumberResultJuly 2017250Excused, juror number greater than required by the CourtMay 2018316Excused due to unavoidable conflict/hardshipJune 2023177All potential…

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Quote attributed to Mark Twain (though it doesn't really fit with his biography) That old quote was a favourite of my father's when I was growing up and even though it's taken…

A couple of days ago, I found out that a very dear friend of mine had passed away and immediately sat down in the Nerdery and started penning an obituary of sorts. After re-reading the post that I wrote to commemorate his passing, whilst I wouldn't really change how it ultimately came out, there were some very personal beats that were definitely pegging the darker end of the "sunshine and light" scale. I've found through…

Sometimes these posts are so easy to write that the words practically fling themselves headlong from my fingertips into sentences and paragraphs and the next thing I know there's a finished article ready for me to hit the Publish button and share my thoughts du jour with the world. This is not one of those stories. This one is going to take a while and I'm not going to promise I'm not going to be…

After just penning a bit of a blistering screed on the subject of being presumed honest and innocent rather than the other way round, I knew the notes I planned on hitting in this annual Memorial Day post where we remember those who sacrificed greatly for the rest of us to have first-world problems like resenting the presumption of dishonesty. Every day for me is Memorial Day as I look up at that triangular wooden…