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I wrote in a prior journal that I had an upcoming date with a married woman I met while at a playground a few months ago. Last Friday I had that date.

We met at a fancy bar. It was the kind of place that had a wine menu a dozen pages long. Very classy place. I arrived first, and she showed up a few minutes later. She extended her hand for a handshake, but I refused it and went in for the hug. She was a little surprised.

The conversation was fantastic and flowed easily. Eventually there was a natural point in the conversation where I could bring up/ask whether or not we were actually on a date. She said she wasn't sure. I let her know about my open relationship status and she said that they have a more Don't Ask Don't Tell type setup.

I'm really bad at remembering exact words. I more remember the 'feel' of the conversation. I got the impression that they used to have a DADT setup, but since her daughter they kinda stopped, but in an unsaid way. It wasn't exactly clear. I did say that I didn't want to be 'that guy', and that I don't want to cause problems with their family.

Anyways, we continued the evening and later a live band came on and started playing. We got up to dance at one point. As we danced we caressed each others fingers in a soft and erotic way. It almost felt as if sparks were jumping between our fingers.

We sat back down and ordered another drink. She ordered another after that 'to find an excuse to prolong the night'. Eventually it was almost 1:00am. She had to run a 5k with her daughter the next morning (I felt terrible for her the next morning). We left, I kissed her, and she hopped into her Uber.

It was an amazing night. I think it was the best date I've been on since I started dating again.

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is going to jail.

On Friday, Manafort was ordered into custody after a federal judge revoked his house arrest, citing newly filed obstruction of justice charges. The move by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made Manafort the first Trump campaign official to be jailed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Already under intense pressure to cooperate with prosecutors in hopes of securing leniency, Manafort now loses the relative freedom he enjoyed while he prepared for two criminal trials in which he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.

Judge jails ex-Trump campaign chair Manafort ahead of trial

Remember all those unproven allegations lobbed at the Clinton Foundation without any evidence? Turns out Trump was projecting again and it was HIS foundation committing crimes, according to the NY Attorney General.

The New York attorney general filed suit against President Trump and his three eldest children Thursday, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at the president’s personal charity, saying Trump repeatedly misused the nonprofit organization — to pay off his businesses’ creditors, to decorate one of his golf clubs and to stage a multimillion-dollar giveaway at his 2016 campaign events.

In the suit, filed Thursday morning, Attorney General Barbara Underwood asked a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation. She asked that its remaining $1 million in assets be distributed to other charities and that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.
Underwood said that oversight of spending at Trump’s foundation was so loose that its board of directors hadn’t met in 19 years, and its official treasurer wasn’t even aware that he was on the board.

Instead, she said, the foundation came to serve the spending needs of Trump — and then, in 2016, the needs of his presidential campaign. She cited emails from Trump campaign staff members, directing which charities should receive gifts from the Trump Foundation, and in what amounts.

New York files suit against President Trump, alleging his charity engaged in ‘illegal conduct’

I appreciate Ubuntu. After dabbling with Devuan, I appreciate Ubuntu more.

I'm a techie, and like playing with things - including different Linux distros - but ultimately I use by computers to get work done. It's time to move on from my old Xubuntu install, so I figured I would try Devuan, since they just released Devuan ASCII. A new version ought to be up-to-date, being a Debian derivative, it ought to be reliable, and not having systemd can only be an advantage. So...

First, the installation process is needlessly confusing. It clearly has only been tested by people who have installed Devuan before. It defaults to wanting to take the whole disk (dangerous). When you insist on manually picking a partition, it doesn't display the partition names (dangerous). Then some of the options are just weird: picking my swap partition (there's already a linux swap on the disk), it offers to format it to ext3, ext4, etc..

During installation, I am informed that some hardware components of my system require non-free drivers. I have no problem with that. But I am asked to "insert the media" with the drivers, "ok or cancel". Um...what media would that be? If the drivers aren't in the ISO image, I have no idea where to get them. But if they are in the ISO image, why ask me to insert media? What will happen if I cancel out? Very confusing.

People who know the installer inside-and-out, and are just testing functionality, won't see any problems with any of this. For people new to the distro, there are a lot chances to seriously screw up along the way. The experience is totally unsuitable to people who aren't extremely technical.

This continues into the next phase of installation. You were able to pick the installation language, but there was no way to pick the next level of detail. Lots of us in Europe install in English, but we don't want US time/date/currency formats and we need an international keyboard. XFCE is installed, but is completely empty - there's not even an application menu. Seriously? A freshly installed system, and the user can't even start an application? Great user experience!

Want to hook up to a wireless network? It was set up during installation, but those settings aren't carried over into the installed system. Instead of detecting what the network actually supports, the user is confronted with a huge list of all possible security protocols. The individual access points are listed - do you have to set up each individual AP? Um...

Ok, we can get past all of this. LibreOffice it pre-installed, that's nice. But not the languages, and the installation process in LibreOffice itself is painful (Ubuntu has a Language Support setting that handles this nicely). And...what's this? LibreOffice 6 has been out for months now, but Devuan's brand new release only has LibreOffice 5.2, which was end-of-life more than a year ago?

This is the point I stopped. Xubuntu 18.04, here I come...

We're sorry, your submission "Alleged UK Neo-Nazi Admits Plot to Murder Lawmaker" was declined for the following reason:
We don't usually report murders or other sensational stories - so the only reason that you would submit this is because it includes the alt-right? Journal--JR

The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.

JR, in case you actually read this, there was no murder, only a confession to a plotted murder by one of your countrymen. I fear the real danger is not Syrian refugees, but Englishmen exposed to that alt-right. And I especially fear that janrinok is one of those.

My wife and I have been looking to get a campervan for a couple months. We have been keeping an eye on Kajiji for vans, and looked at a couple.

The first was a 1986 28' motorhome. $4,500. We drove 1/2 way across the city to go take a look one evening. This thing was in great condition. Diesel. Nice kitchen, small bathroom with shower, and enough beds to sleep 6.

I poked around and we took it for a test drive. Brakes were a little sketchy and this thing was slow. I think it could do highway speeds on a flat road with no wind. It was pretty awesome. My daughter loved it. She liked looking in all the little cupboards and sitting in the back while we drove around.

It was a really good deal, so we were really thinking about buying it, but it was too big to store at our house comfortably, so we ended up passing on it.

Last Thursday, we looked at an actual campervan on the other side of the city and we ended up buying that one. She's a 1985 Dodge B250. We are pretty excited! It's in pretty good condition. The interior is 80's brown plaid. It's got a stove, oven, fridge, heater, small solar panels, and a little toilet in the back. It's got a high roof so I can fully stand without banging my head on the ceiling. Yesterday I was out trying all the stuff out to make sure everything worked. I got everything working except for the oven. The pilot would light fine, but the burner would not turn on. I think the thermostat needs replacing on that.

I need to take the van into a mechanic to get the shocks replaced. Also, the brakes pulse, so I want to get the front pads and discs replaced. The van doesn't warm up, so the thermostat needs to also be replaced.

So, she needs a little work, but she's almost as old as I am, so that's understandable. We paid $8,700, and I'm pretty happy. I can't wait to load her up with all our stuff and take her out camping!

A longtime business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted Friday on charges he conspired to obstruct justice as investigators probed a past secret lobbying scheme on behalf of Ukraine.

Konstantin Kilimnik was charged in a superseding indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. The new charges revolve around allegations that he and Manafort tried to influence two potential witnesses in a case involving the failure to register as foreign lobbyists.

Those accusations are part of a recent effort by the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to revoke or revise Manafort’s bail conditions while he awaits trial next month in northern Virginia. A hearing on the bail issue is scheduled for next week. The indictment also charges Manafort with obstruction and conspiring to obstruct justice.

Special counsel Mueller indicts Paul Manafort, Russian associate on obstruction charges

That brings the investigation by Mueller — derided regularly by President Trump as an unwarranted and unfair “witch hunt” — to a total of 20 individuals and three businesses that have either been indicted or admitted guilt and a total of 75 charges filed by the year-old probe.

Mueller’s ‘witch hunt’ snags another witch

I've been spending a lot of time swinging lately. I have a small park across the street from my house and my daughter (now 1.5 years old) could spend all day in the swing. "Outside!", she says to me. "Schwing!" She grabs onto one of my fingers and together we walk across the street to the park. It's adorable.

I've met more of my neighbors in the last 2 months than I have the last 9 years living in my house. There is a woman and her little boy who is 2 who lives on the other side of the park who I run into frequently. There is also a rough looking guy (who is a total softie with his kid) who also has a 2 year old I've run into a couple times. I've been going to the park with my girl to swing almost every night after dinner. It seems to help get all her energy out before bed.

We are still having major sleeping problems. She is still waking up 3-5 times per night. My wife sleeps with her and I sleep alone in the computer room. It's not ideal. We are hoping to get my computer moved somewhere else, and my daughter will take the computer room as her room and I will move back in with my wife. My house is very small, so space is at a premium. I don't want to give up my computer room, but it has to happen. We have been trying to get her room ready for a while now, but it has been really tough to find free time to get it done.

I also have a quick update on my dating life... I've largely quit looking for dates. It takes a lot of effort to get a date and I just don't have the energy. However, last winter I was at an indoor playground and I wound up chatting with a lady. She ended up giving me her business card and I followed up with her. We met again at the indoor playground a couple months later and chatted some more. She has a pretty important job and travels a lot so we haven't been able to meet up since but we have a date scheduled for next week.

She is married and we haven't discussed open marriages or anything like that. I'm not 100% that our meetup next week is a date, but it sure seems like a date to me. I asked if she would meet for drinks, she said yes, I suggested a couple pubs, she countered with a fancy/classy bar downtown. She said that they have live music later in the night, so we are meeting there at 8:30 next friday.

It's going to be interesting. Is it actually a date? Does her husband know? Is she in an open marriage?

Find out in the coming weeks.

-- Snow

While serving as secretary of State, Hillary Clinton disregarded an instruction from the Foreign Affairs Manual directing her to use State Department equipment for day-to-day operations. Clinton almost certainly did this for convenience — since she could not connect her smartphone to the State Department server, the directive made it harder for her to check her email on a mobile device — but the issue somehow became a first-tier national scandal. The bizarre prominence this story took on is worth revisiting given Monday night’s revelation that Donald Trump is doing essentially the same thing.

Trump continues to use personal phone because a secure phone is too inconvenient - LOCK HIM UP!

Trump’s clear double standard between Hillary Clinton’s emails and his own cell phones
Trump's Unsecured iPhones Make Clinton's Basement Server Look Like Fort Knox

The school shooting near Houston on Friday bolstered a stunning statistic: More people have been killed at schools this year than have been killed while serving in the military.

Initial estimates put the number killed at Santa Fe High School at eight, but, even without those deaths, nearly twice as many people were killed at schools than in the military. (The figures for the military were compiled from Defense Department news releases and include both combat and noncombat deaths.) Including only students who died in school shootings (excluding, for example, teachers) the total still exceeds military casualties.

2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than service members