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The Humble Bundle has a bunch of BSG (classic and new) comics on sale ($15 for the bunch).

Looks interesting: i've grown kind of fond of e-comics and manga's. About the only thing i can do while mobile, (like going to Disney World) cause i ain't got no phone.

Would have loved one of the phones Ubuntu was trying to crowd fund, but it was like $600-800+, if memory serves (and it NEVER DOES, Batman), but yeah.... money.

Still saving for that computer upgrade, but Disney set me back a bit, lol.
But worth it.
Last years vacation was a staycation. Really sucked. Didn't do anything. Disney World i enjoyed even though the humidity put it up over 109 degrees.
Helllllllla enjoyed EVERY second, pretty much.

Disney really can do a good job, despite the tracky-ness of it all. You just gotta want it bad enough: and i hella needed it.

Always nice to see your kids face light up like it did when Goofy entered the room.

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Molly!

Interesting fact that nobody bothers to mention about solar eclipses. It feels about twenty degrees cooler during totality than it does half an hour before or after. This is a good thing during a Tennessee summer.

Joss Whedon fan site shuts down after ex-wife's critical essay

Joss Whedon's Ex-Wife Warns He's A Hypocrite 'Preaching Feminist Ideals'

Joss Whedon Is a 'Hypocrite Preaching Feminist Ideals,' Ex-Wife Kai Cole Says (Guest Blog)

Five times Joss Whedon, self-proclaimed 'woke bae', blew his feminist credentials

So farewell then.

No wonder so many Americans are overweight: at Disney World, I was drinking all you can drink Powerade because they didn't have club soda available.
We've been drinking water in the car driving, but when you stop, it's huge amounts of food, washed down with cuke.

I rediscovered catfish at the Cracker barrel, though. Haven't had it in about 40 years: sooooo good! We used to catch perch for breakfast as kids, but the catfish was nice.

Americans love their fireworks, snacks and GUNS, if you go by their roadside advertisements.
It's been fun, but our timeline took us off the perfect eclipse viewing track. We'll still be in the US, though, so we'll see something anyways, lol. I'm going to try to video it for shits and giggles.

Almost home: going to go through Niagara Falls. Love that place.

So, I know you all have read the moderator guidelines and remember the very important "Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting." bit, yes? Well, I went looking for who the worst offenders were against that out of curiousity. I'm not sure it's really proper to shame them here though. You lot can leave your opinions on that here and us staff types will discuss it later.

What I absolutely can and will post are the badasses who have most excellent ratios of upmods to downmods. Without further ado, here's everyone with over a thousand upmods to their credit and a downmod percentage of less than 10%.

+--------------+-----------------+
| percent_down | nickname        |
+--------------+-----------------+
|       0.0865 | VLM             |
|       0.1188 | anubi           |
|       0.1209 | AnonTechie      |
|       0.2067 | tonyPick        |
|       0.4737 | redneckmother   |
|       0.5438 | Reziac          |
|       0.6222 | CoolHand        |
|       0.6494 | Bobs            |
|       0.7171 | WillAdams       |
|       0.8937 | McGruber        |
|       1.1099 | GlennC          |
|       1.1341 | fritsd          |
|       1.2910 | maxwell demon   |
|       1.3060 | pinchy          |
|       1.3723 | HiThere         |
|       1.4609 | monster         |
|       1.8067 | DannyB          |
|       1.8447 | J053            |
|       1.8601 | quacking duck   |
|       2.2772 | deimtee         |
|       2.4750 | mhajicek        |
|       2.5053 | Unixnut         |
|       2.6012 | dak664          |
|       2.6693 | zocalo          |
|       2.8353 | Yog-Yogguth     |
|       2.8932 | rts008          |
|       3.1125 | khchung         |
|       3.2325 | The Archon V2.0 |
|       3.5069 | GungnirSniper   |
|       3.5307 | canopic jug     |
|       3.7419 | Freeman         |
|       3.7582 | jelizondo       |
|       4.3070 | turgid          |
|       4.3096 | hubie           |
|       4.5095 | bradley13       |
|       4.8469 | Scruffy Beard 2 |
|       4.9924 | Nerdfest        |
|       5.1967 | Kymation        |
|       6.1929 | Bloopie         |
|       6.2708 | linkdude64      |
|       7.2055 | SpockLogic      |
|       7.2575 | acid andy       |
|       7.3139 | NotSanguine     |
|       7.4517 | Ethanol-fueled  |
|       8.5932 | KiloByte        |
|       9.5238 | Hawkwind        |
|       9.6141 | bart9h          |
+--------------+-----------------+

Congrats to VLM. He is currently Da Man.

Typed on my crappy tablet: took fracking forever.

Welp, as the title says, Disney can fuck my telemetry up the ass for all I care (I'll care in a few days), my son (which means me, lol) just had a Game of Thrones quality day (or a Tom Baker-Doctor Who day?)

First of all, stay at a resort: when we booked (aug. 15-18), it was hurricane/thunder storm season so we got a free meal plan which my wife upgraded to a dinner plan with sit down meals: smart woman. (Plan ahead and book ahead, of the restaurants fill up quickly). We have had mostly cloudy days, so less sun to burn, but high temps with high humidity (93, feels like 109).

When you register, tell them about any food allergies and it will follow you around!
Our first dinner was at the Rainforest cafe at 9pm (first time we could get for the first day): steak dinner that would have cost us $34 each was free. A 'chef' came out to explain what we could order to avoid gluten and dairy, and it was an excellent meal.
Second dinner was a buffet at Boma restaurant: buffet that would have been $43 each: waiter took us to table and then sat down with us, took allergy info, talked with us (thought he was going to eat with us, lol) then brought out a chef to walk us through the buffet to tell us what we could eat and not.
Xcellent service and food.
Third dinner was Best. Dinner. Ever. at Chef Mickey's: personalized service again, but had a MOB of characters at the tables and doing dances. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto all came to our table for pictures, hugs and high fives (although I should have punched Goofy for missing my wife, lol).
Our son loves it all, and the buffet took second place (they have gluten free waffles that were amazing, though).

We got free snacks with our plan and a free cup with, I guess a chip, for free drinks (except, there's no club soda, so the calories aren't great: I drank the Powerade). Cup sits on platform/scanner and won't dispense drink unless it senses a valid cup. I tried to fill my son's water bottle with Powerade, but it cuts you off after a fill and a bit of the cup and makes you wait 3 minutes before you can dispense another cup. Free, but semi-limited. Dang!
The snacks: we were really too full to use them, and only started using them just to use them (cinnamon glazed almonds...yesssssss!)

Stay at a resort if you can:
We stayed at all star music: you can go to the park (if you don't bring a bag, you don't have to go through the bag check, but do have to do the metal detector thing).
We put drinks, etc, in a backpack and put the backpack on the wheelchair!
Go to the park in the morning and hit what you want with little wait and use pre-booked fast pass too.
When the heat and rain is coming, go back to the resort for a rest/swim, then back to park in afternoon.
If you stay outside the park (like we did years ago), if you get tired, you trek back to your car, drive back tired, then probably too tired to go back at night.....
Much better this vacation.

You can skip the meet and greet character things if you go to chef Mickey's.

Rides for kids and kids at heart:
Go to The trouble with bugs' thing: bad smells wafted down at you, my wife got a poke in the back, but I wasn't sitting with my back against the chair back so I missed it. You also get this funny/creepy 'bugs running under your butt' thing which is really kind of just cool.
Our son liked the Buzz light-year spin ride thing, but he likes Buzz so he's biased, lol.
Small world ride is aging and looking it, but it's a long ride to relax on.

Carousel of progress has been my wife and my favourite since we went as not quite newlyweds.
Fun ride, until you get to the modern/future time: then I get lost a bit. I like the simple format of the guy sitting in his chair with the dog on the floor, and he narrates with things happening behind screens on either side. The modern/future one is the whole family at once, and seems chaotic and not as interesting for me. But would watch over again...... because!

Skip the animal kingdom: not that interesting for us, but we did not see Pandora, so....

Haunted house is a skip: it seems darker (to keep paint from fading?) and ghosts dimmer. Or I'm getting old. Anyways, not worth the wait, we decided.

So, if we ever go again, note to self: (especially if grand kids ever come along)
Stay at resort and upgrade meal to dinners.
Book chef Mickey restaurant, absolutely! Book restaurants ahead of time (2weeks or more ahead, if possible).
Skip animal kingdom.
Go to Trouble with bugs.
Ride monorail, but only the air conditioned ones.

I am not affiliated with Disney at all, this is just some things I wish I had known years ago.

Next, off to Mammoth Caves: we went there years ago: it is so deep underground, they turn the lights off, light a match, then blow it out and drop it. You can hear the match hit the ground like your ear is right beside it.

Better than my stay at home vacation last summer!

So, yesterday I moved my car into The Roomie's parking space, moved my boat out of the yard and into mine, and mowed the yard. All was good and celebratory beer was drank.

Enter today. I go outside for a smoke and while enjoying it I think to myself, "Self, TR's going to be back from his customer service road trip today. You should jockey things back around before he gets home." This sounded like a fine and courteous idea, so I got up and proceeded towards said goal.

Unfortunately when I went to lift up the tongue of my boat trailer (Well balanced. Boat and trailer together weigh maybe 500lbs. Load on my arms maybe 50lbs.) that I'd moved easily the day before and wag it back over into the grass beside TR's boat. For some unknown reason, my back takes that specific moment to remind me that I started having birthdays beyond my 40th within the past few years; or, to put it more succinctly, it just shit right out on me.

Damned traitorous body parts. If it weren't for all the skills and wisdom you tend to pick up along the way, I'd say getting older sucked.

This has put me entirely not in the mood to bandy words with my peers and adversaries. My apologies to those who will likely never know how utterly wrong some comment of theirs is. To those in need of mocking, leave a note here and I'll get to you as soon as the pain's lessened enough to think through. See you lot in a week or so, I expect.

Walt Disney World, I've found with this vacation, tracks you everywhere and now has my finger prints: they use chipped cards and 'watch-band' type things. AND, you also use a finger to pass through the park gates.

The system for passing through the park gates is glitchy, and you either have to use a fingerprint or get your picture taken because of the glitch not making your chipped device work.
When the devices don't work, the person letting you through raises their hand, and a supervisor type comes over to solve the issue. The issue happens constantly. He supervisor comes over and tried to solve the issue with a pad device running Windows, which you can see because when they tap the device, there is a brief flash of the windows logo.

The issue happens CONSTANTLY.

My son won't wear the watch thing, so I wear his and mine, and use (because I was surprised by the request for a fingerprint) my index finger on my left hand for him, and my middle finger of my right hand for me.
Now I have to remember which finger for which hand, AND they have my fingerprints.

Will the prints be wiped when I leave? I'm going to have to ask, but I'm doubting it.
At least they don't have my son's prints, but they did take his picture for the 'disabled fast pass' thing.

Sigh: go to enjoy yourself, and end up wondering who has your details.

Note to self: don't go for the Disney hookers.

BUT, my son is enjoying himself, so......worth it.