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had a go at making a url shortener. very basic but seems to work

http://o.my.to/

you can also use it from soylent irc with the command "~shorten %url%" (must be identified with nickserv)

So, the other day, my Wife and I were driving on the highway. She turns to me, and says, "I think I want to be involved. We should create a couples profile, and see if we can find a girl for a Triad". (A Triad is, basically, a serious three-way relationship where ideally everyone loves each other.)
"Great!", I say, and we drive on in silence as I try to process this.

Now I don't know how many of you are familiar with online dating, but it really sucks to be a guy on an online dating site (unless you are really, really hot). For a guy, it's mostly looking at pictures of women (some attractive, most not), then reading their profile, and sending a message that is hopefully good and original. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of time. The vast majority of your messages will be unanswered. It's tough not to feel like the mud on their boots that they try to scrape off, but there are entire forums related to this subject. Now, I'm not a terrible looking guy, but I am married and open about that, so that deters a lot of women.
My wife knows that the online dating scene hasn't been the easiest thing for me, and so her suggestion to make a couple's profile was her way of helping. My wife is pretty damn good looking, with beautiful reddish hair. Finding a women with her as part of the package might make things easier.

Now for me, a Triad is really my ideal end game. The thought of having a wife and a girlfriend that not only get along, but actually love each other would be amazing! My mind was racing for much of the day, trying to sort everything out.

This brings us to Unicorns. So, what is a Unicorn? Well, a Unicorn is a creature that is exceedingly rare with mythical qualities. So basically: a single (or at least available) woman, who is bisexual, attractive, open to being a "secondary" in an existing relationship, intellectually stimulating (for me), and spiritual (for my Wife). That Unicorn seems like a pretty amazing person...

Often couples looking for Unicorns unilaterally set rules that will apply to the Unicorn. Things like only sleeping with the Unicorn together, rules around being seen in public, loving them equally (as if that is even possible), etc. Now, we aren't really heavy on the rules (practice safer sex, basically), but many couples do have these rules, so Unicorn Hunters generally have a bad rap.

So, at the end of the day, we sit down on the couch and have a deeper conversation about things. I ask her why she wants to be involved now, when she didn't before. What changed her mind? I've been complaining about how crappy internet dating is, so I'm worried that she is only agreeing to this to try and help me out.

I make her read a really good article on Unicorn Hunting to make sure that we are on the same page. I don't want to set a lot of rules to restrict the relationship. The Unicorn is a person too, and they deserve to be treated fairly. If we do this, we are going to do this right.

We have a lot going on in our life right now. She has an appointment next Monday to have her UID taken out because we are going to try to have a baby (I'm terrified about that...). My Mom has been battling with booze for years and my sister thinks that things are getting worse, so she wants to stage an intervention type thing. I had to tell my sister that while I support her confronting our Mom about the drinking, I have a full plate and I can't guarantee much help on that front from me. I told my sister about my Wife and mine's relationship and how we were trying an open/polyamorous style of relationship. I trust my sister a lot, and I was really worried about coming out to her about this, but she really took it well. She didn't seem that surprised, mostly curious. She said that my wife and I have such a good relationship, that she could see how this could work. That was a really pleasant surprise. I've been really worried about opening up to my family... I'm sure that there are still mines to navigate there though. I have a big family, and some of them are really Catholic.

Anyways, so back to Unicorn Hunting... I didn't want my wife to be involved because she pitied me and my failures at online dating. I made her read the Unicorn Hunting Article. She reads the article, looks up at me, and says "I'm relieved".
"Why is that?", I say. It turns out that she did suggest becoming involved not for herself, but for me. Her #1 priority in life right now is a baby. She doesn't feel that she has the time or motivation to be involved with another person right now. I suspected as much, so while a little disappointed, I was happy that we could get to the bottom of things, and that we were doing things for the right reasons.

So, it's back to me being solo. I'm cool with that. At this point, I want to prove to myself that I can get a girl on my own. Everything in life that is worth a damn requires effort.

Well, back to the world of dating...

****

P.S. I'm sure some of you are thinking "Open Relationship + Baby = Not good (that poor baby)". Here's the thing... I'd wait another 5 years to have a baby if I had the choice, but I don't. My wife is 32.5 years old, so we are running out of time to have babies. Having kids is important to us, so biologically speaking, now is the time to have kids.

My wife an I both come from divorced parents, so we know all about a kid living with a broken family, and that is not something we want for our kids. My wife and I are both fully committed to each other and our relationship. Even though we have decided to take an unconventional path, I believe that our relationship is still much more stable than the average. Maybe both of us having parents that ended up cheating and breaking up the family gives us different perspectives and opinions. Remove the desire to cheat, improve communication, and maybe we can have a happy marriage while being free to explore ourselves as well. It won't be all smiles and rainbows, but neither of us are expecting that.

****

P.P.S. I'm curious to hear feedback on my journal entries. Do people enjoy them? Should I continue? Is this the right location for them? I realize that this is a tech site, but it's where I feel comfortable. Plus, there is a link for here for a journal, so I just start typing. There are a lot of people here that are married, and I'm sure there are some that may relate to my journals. Maybe it's helpful in some bizarre way. For me, I just like putting it out there. I like collecting my thoughts and writing it down. I also think that it might be neat to look back on years from know. Let me know what you think.

If you like my journal entries, add me to your Soylent Friends list. You will get a message when I make a new entry. Thanks for reading!

-- Snow

EDIT: Here is the article on Unicorn Hunting. It's a really great read:
http://davidlnoble.livejournal.com/176039.html

So I released the first update release for 1.2 series. It's a very small update, it fixes a bug that pissed me off and it adds support for something I wanted to get into 1.2.0.

The bug: There was a problem caused by dunce syndrome where the time for shutdown commands had extra or too few zeroes, caused by a tired coding problem.

The feature: Now the 'epoch status', 'epoch start', 'epoch restart', 'epoch stop', and 'epoch reload' commands can have multiple service names specified at once. That means instead of 'epoch restart aqu4bot;epoch restart aqu4bot_soy', now I can just do 'epoch restart aqu4bot aqu4bot_soy'. Saves a bit of typing if you have a big list of services you want to apply the same action to. The method I used to implement this for 'epoch status' is hideous and is ironic considering the goals of 1.2 Peroxide, but it works and it's not buggy or anything.

Those are literally the only changes in this release.
The 1.x.1 releases tend to be little bitty bugfixes and stuff.

Epoch Init System homepage
Download Epoch 1.2.1 (tar.gz)

So, I've pushed out the final version of the Epoch Init System 1.2.0 "Peroxide". It's mostly a bugfix release and cleans up most of the nasty code in Epoch. Here's the tarball: http://universe2.us/epoch_1.2.0.tar.gz

I probably could have done more to it, but I wanted to just finish and get the release out so I could roll an update for my personal distro with the new version of Epoch in it. Nonetheless, this release should be pretty stable and is a recommended update. It is safe to update 1.0 and 1.1 releases to 1.2.0 without rebooting. Replace the 'epoch' binary with the new version and then run 'epoch reexec'. Check /var/log/system.log and it should tell you that you've been updated to 1.2.0. NOTE: if you do NOT run 'epoch reexec' after replacing the binary, your root filesystem will not be able to be remounted read-only on system shutdown and that could lead to data loss.
There is no good reason I can think of that you would not want to run 'epoch reexec'.

Here is a list of changes:

Changes since 1.1.1:

* Cleaned up a huge amount of code that was just fugly as hell. This is the big change.
* Removed unsigned long abuse caused by my (at the time) severe OCD.
* New service status output format. Looks cleaner.
* Extremely deprecated AlignStatusReports attribute completely removed. I doubt even one person will be affected by this.
* Add three new attributes: StartingStatusFormat, FinishedStatusFormat, and
StatusNames to manually specify an alternate service status output format.

* Specific bugfixes:
        * Don't set a config problem check to WARNING after we already found a FAILURE.
        * Fix overwriting service messages, caused by our old status format.
        * Fix inaccurate reporting of scheduled shutdown times, now report seconds too.

Maybe it's the season.

Anyway here's me quoting RT.com quoting Obama (whe-heey nested quotations):

‘“We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States because if somebody is able to intimidate us out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like,” Obama said.’

( source )

Damn right.

Obama & the US made precisely this point four years ago according to the New York Times:

‘When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.’

( source )

Because it is completely different when it is not an entertainment movie but instead a list containing some of the biggest and most central papers in five countries as well as large number of irrelevant smaller ones. It doesn't compare at all and has to be far more unimportant than Hollywood fiction.

If the task is to record history for the future then it is of particular unimportance since no one will ever use it for anything sensible:

‘An error message pops up every time a search is performed with the word “WikiLeaks”.

It’s not entirely clear when the US National Archives decided to block these searches.’

‘The Library of Congress went further by blocking access to WikiLeaks content from its server in 2010.

The American Library Association suggested this violated the First Amendment rights of internet users to receive information.

“The Library of Congress’s decision is a violation of the First Amendment and a violation of the American Library Association’s Bill of Rights. Moreover, it is a violation of the professional ethics of librarians to always provide free access to all information,” their statement said.’

( source )

Nor does it take much for the banhammer to fall, as is right, rumor is enough, rumor is fact:

‘The directive states:

        “We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled “The Intercept” for it may very well contain classified material.

        As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms. Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation.”

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was “illegal and a violation of national security” to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.

“Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.”’

( source )

Got IRCiv back to a working state after reworking authentication to make use of new features now built into exec. Also makes use of included alias definition, init and startup directives.

New features include map image cropping (no more huge black areas), a crop_map flag, use of notice instead of pm for private status messages, queuing of messages triggered by actions of other players, use of bot IRC message handling pause/unpause for robustness against command flooding (mainly to prevent corruption of memory shared by scripts running in parallel), a game-list command, and ability to load and save all game data to files.

Join the #civ channel in soylent IRC. Must be identified with NickServ to play. Type "~civ init" to initialize your player.
Note that IRCiv is not fully playable yet and is very much a work in progress in early stages of development.

Sample test gameplay:

<civ_test_player> ~civ u
<crutchy> ~civ d
<exec> #civ crutchy => player "civ_test_player" moved a unit within your field of vision
<exec> #civ crutchy => successfully moved settler down from (66,39) to (66,40)
<exec> #civ crutchy => you moved a unit within the field of vision of player "civ_test_player"
<exec> #civ crutchy => http://irciv.us.to/?pid=3
<exec> #civ crutchy => 1/2, warrior, +100, (76,26)
<crutchy> ~civ ?
<exec> QUICK START GUIDE
<exec> unit movement: (left|l),(right|r),(up|u),(down|d)
<exec> settler actions: (build|b)
<exec> player functions: (help|?),status,init,flag/unflag,set/unset
<exec> flags: public_status,grid,coords,city_names,crop_map
<exec> http://sylnt.us/irciv
<crutchy> ~civ unflag public_status
<exec> flag "public_status" unset for player "crutchy"
<crutchy> ~civ d
-exec- #civ crutchy => successfully moved warrior down from (76,26) to (76,27)
-exec- #civ crutchy => http://irciv.us.to/?pid=3
-exec- #civ crutchy => 0/2, settler, +100, (66,40)
<crutchy> ~civ d
-exec- #civ crutchy => successfully moved settler down from (66,40) to (66,41)
-exec- #civ crutchy => you moved a unit within the field of vision of player "civ_test_player"
-exec- #civ crutchy => http://irciv.us.to/?pid=3
-exec- #civ crutchy => 1/2, warrior, +100, (76,27)

Example map:
http://irciv.us.to/?pid=2

--
http://sylnt.us/irciv
https://github.com/crutchy-/exec-irc-bot/tree/master/scripts/irciv

I have just created a new blog for myself, one for my ramblings and thoughts.
It's brand new, and still being looked at for theme and layout settings.

Having said that, my first actual post is about my SCOM Maintenance Mode tool:
http://myrandomthoughts.co.uk/2014/12/scom-maintenance-mode

Enjoy

So, that girl from the previous entries and I had a second date yesterday.

I picked her up and took her out to the mountains for a short hike to a canyon that has frozen waterfalls, and then we had lunch at a place that makes flatbread pizzas.

I think she was still pretty nervous, because I had to make most of the conversation for the first 1/2 of the day. After a while she started opening up and talking a lot more. She seems like a really nice person, but I don't think that we are very compatible.

At the end of the date, I took a peck on the lips, and left. I felt pretty used after the date. I thought that I had arranged for a pretty damn good date, I paid for everything, and not even a thank you. I'm not upset that I didn't get any action (quite the opposite... there was no chemistry, so it would have felt weird...), but just a simple thank you would have been very nice. I'm not even upset about paying for everything (I probably make double what she does), it's just that it felt like it was taken for granted... Maybe that is what I'm going to have to get used to.

I was really hoping that it would work out because just getting a first date was a terrible process filled with rejection.

Anyways, back to square one.

if you're in IRC and you wanna bring up a wiki section for discussion, type:

[[title|section]]

to output the wiki page section

eg:

[[IRC|Chat bot (Python)]]

outputs:

<exec> ELIZA module that uses Futurama personalities (to match the bot's current nick) Modify bot logging to match existing formats (mIRC preferably)
<exec> http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/IRC#Chat_bot_.28Python.29

This is a book review for the book "Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships" by Tristan Taormino

http://www.amazon.ca/Opening-Up-Creating-Sustaining-Relationships/dp/157344295X

I don't really know the proper format and style for a book review, and I frankly don't care, so this might be in an unconventional style.

This is a book all about open relationships. The history, the different kinds, as well as some related topics - jealousy, setting rules and boundaries, dealing with problems, raising children, and a few others. For those that have been following my other journal entries, you will know that my wife and I are opening up our marriage. This book is often highly recommended to couples (or individuals) who want to explore open relationships.

The author sent out a questionnaire to collect data from people in nonmonogamous relationships, and the book incorporates the results of that questionnaire through stats and case studies that are sprinkled throughout the book. The book overs many different types of nonmonogamy - partnered nonmonogamy, swinging, ployamory, solo polyamory, polyfidelity, and also when one member is monogamous while the other is not. Each of these gets it's own chapter where the book explains each in detail.

From there, the book provides information and examples on how one might negotiate an open relationship, and deal with things while in one.

I read this book earlier this week, and really found it really helpful. I come from a large and pretty close family that is quite conservative, and so for me, nonmongamy is pretty foreign. This book really helped me wrap my head around everything, while providing examples of relationships that were working while being open.

This book definitely has a favourable bias towards open relationships, there were many case studies of relationships that were working, but very few (if any) of relationships that fell apart. This may have been intentional by the writer, or it may have been a result of the self selected respondents of the survey (people that it didn't work for might not have responded).

I find that this book helped me 'normalize' the concept of open relationships. My wife is currently reading it as well and is about 1/3 of the way through. She has enjoyed it this far, and has also said that it has really helped.

I agree with the many other people that have recommended this book. This is a must read for people interested or currently in open relationships.

-- Snow