After taking a nearly 5 year hiatus, The Lonely Libertarian is back up and active.
I haven't noticed until earlier today that there's been new uploads by Angel, and I am so happy to see her back up, and I look forward to seeing what she has in store for us blog readers.
I have recently been going to a local swinger's club with my lady friend here locally, and have been having a good time overall.
The club is a small local hangout that's been around for a very long time. Admission is $40 for couples, and when you go in on Wednesday nights, you get a card for free return admission on subsequent nights until Saturday. Pretty good deal in our opinion, and the fun usually lasts until 1-2 am.
There is a dance floor with DJs, a bar (it's BYOB), a pool and hot tub (very nice and well worth the price of admission alone), and multiple private bedrooms plus an orgy room for the pleasures. On Friday and Saturday nights, there is an upstairs area reserved for couples only (no singles allowed), plus they also serve some food. Very well-behaved bunch of folks as the first rule is 'No means No', and violators are asked to leave if they persist. So no crazy shenanigans to be had unless it's with consent. Also, no photography or cell phone usage are permitted inside the club.
It can be real easy to get yourself lost in all the lust, so my friend and I agreed to basically just go every other week and give ourselves a break in between.
There are other places in the Vegas area, but this one we seem to be more comfortable in, and less cliques involved than the other places. It just gives us a chance to relax, be ourselves, and socialize with other like-minded individuals.
This evening I am chilling at work awaiting a call, and hope things stay frosty tonight.
More to come later as usual...
I came across this posting from Peter regarding the fragility of our infrastructure, which made me think of the potential for mayhem here in Sin City.
Contrary to popular belief, Hoover Dam only provides a small portion of electricity for the Las Vegas area; most of our power comes from natural gas turbine generator plants, with a bit of solar and geothermal power generation thrown in. The natural gas supply mostly comes from western Texas and eastern New Mexico via pipelines thru Arizona, and IIRC there's also one coming from Wyoming via Utah. Altogether, those are vulnerable to disruption from natural disaster, malevolent actors, etc.
Water is also an issue as almost all of it is pumped from Lake Mead, and over 90% of what we take out is put back in after it's treated. Granted, it's still vulnerable to various things, and lord help us if the pumps fail. The fabled Las Vegas Springs are just a memory as they literally stopped being a source of water here after the 1950's.
And since Clark County has been pretty much a big D stronghold since before I moved here (in 1991), expect the usual mindset from similar voices in other dastardly D areas.
Prep quietly, keep things low key, and keep your powder dry (easy to do with all the heat).
Today is another year passed since I started on this earth.
Hard to believe that I am now 55, I feel as horny as 25 (or 15 for that matter), and goes to show age can really be just a number.
By coincidence, an old acquaintance from my high school days came up to visit for a couple of days, and last night I took her down to Fremont Street, and had a chance to finally go into the Circa Hotel-Casino which I meant to go visit since they opened about 2 years ago. Wasn't too bad, plenty of eye-candy to behold both inside and outside. After extricating from there, I took her down on a cruise of the Strip, and it was typical assholes-and-elbows traffic even at 00-dark-30 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.
Gave me a chance for one more look at the Mirage before they close up on the 17th of this month. Sad to see an icon go, but change is the name of the game here in town.
Tonight, back to the grind. At least I'll have my regular partner back with me on shift this week.
Just keeping busy with work and some personal matters. Changes are coming, some good, some so-so.
Will keep y'all in the loop best I can.
Abuse is abuse, no matter what.
Some more tidbits from the blogs I try to follow:
1. BCE is reminiscing on 20 years since he went to Iraq as a civilian contractor and how times changed. I will say this, he's now almost half the man he used to be. Thanks for stepping up to the plate and still sending good vibes to you and Gretchen and hope her battle with cancer ends in a resounding victory.
2. Not much from Electrospaces (formerly known as Top Level Communications) lately, there's an article (in Dutch) regarding how the Dutch government is proposing regulations on how their intelligence community is able to respond to cyber threats.
3. Over at Wirecutter's blog, I came across this interesting tidbit about how PornHub is going to block users in Texas in order to be compliant with a recently-passed state law that penalizes sites for not properly verifying the age of their visitors to prevent underaged folks from viewing the content. Depending on how they got their gateways configured, this can be easily circumvented with a VPN client just like how lots of folks are able to view IPTV content from other areas which may be blocked. Time will tell if this is gonna work out...
And on a personal note, my dad is once again back in the hospital for internal bleeding (his hemoglobin was at 4.5 :-o ) so hopefully they can find out where it's coming from and get it fixed.
Another personal and professional note, the live show that I regularly work as a backstage medic announced that they are closing and that the last day is May 11. I'll post more later about that along with pics when I get a chance.
In my usual tromps around the blogosphere, Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man posted this article from a interesting source on some suggestive advice to the Russian soldier on how to deal with the combat in the Ukraine.
I find it an interesting study on the mindset of the Russian soldier's mindset in particular and the Slavic culture and worldview in general.
Considering that Russia is trying to bring itself back to greatness on the world stage, it does bear some study. Knowing your potential adversary is a basic tenet on preparing for conflict.
This article about a professor at Harvard that had received a severe backlash when his study to determine if racial bias exists in regards to police shootings showed no such bias even exists.
Even after he redid the study with new assistants to formulate and tabulate the data, he still achieved the same end result.
I would like to see the actual study and review the methodology used for manipulating the data, and see if it holds to generally accepted practices used for similar studies. The fact that his peers warned him not to publish does make me wonder. At least he was forthcoming in publishing the results and not trying to bury it somewhere.
Yet another example of the mob not liking reality, it seems...
I've been following Big Country Expat's blog for awhile, and while he is definitely on the right side politically, I do respect his views on most things we have in common, plus he is a good source for some twisted humor when most needed. And working in EMS, some days it is definitely called for.
He's had some issues come up with custody of his grandaughter Adrianna, which I have noted previously, and I've helped out with what I can financially.
Now he's got another unfortunate matter to deal with. His wonderful lovely and bosomy wife Gretchen has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and they don't want to deal with the nasty route of regular medical treatment like chemo and such (and I can empathize with them on that, seeing my maternal grandmother going through that when I was a teen), and so they are pursuing non-traditional but purportedly effective therapies to fight this.
Obviously they need some major moolah for this latest fight.
He has set up another fundraiser on GiveSendGo named Help the Hair Diva! to help get the money together for Gretchen's care. (Personally I would have called it 'Save da Girls!', as I commented on his blog, referencing Gretchen's lovely figure, but that is his prerogative)
Once I get paid tomorrow I'm kicking some money their way what I can spare, and I hope others can do that as well.
Lots of places:
1. Lost my oldest brother and his wife to not so certain causes. We haven't heard anything from them in awhile, so contacted the sheriff's office, they go do a welfare check, and find them deceased...and they've been that way about 4-6 weeks at least from the condition of the bodies. No clear cause as to why, no obvious signs of foul play, so likely fentanyl OD is the cause. My brother and his wife were messed up with that stuff for a time, and maybe it came back to hit them once too many.
2. Since we haven't had a chance to go down to my dad's place to check on things after the sheriff and coroner had been there (due to illnesses and other issues) my sister, my good buddy, and I went down there couple of weeks ago to check things out and make sure things are secured.
They weren't.
It looked like a tornado hit. Lot of stuff missing. Still hurts to discuss...so will get back to that.
3. The gov job didn't pan out as with my dad's downturn and other changes it didn't feel comfortable for me to continue down that path.
4. Been really sick this past week with stomach bug, getting little better but my gut's still doing flip-flops.
More to come...
