unixknight

The weather today is gorgeous, but since my wife works tonight I'm stuck home with the kids. The punching bag is still there, though!

So while I have yet to honestly drag myself back up onto the wagon, I did excavate my heavy bag and worked it over a bit. My arms are sore today (which I see as a good thing. It means I actually did some good). Weigh-in tonight.

I generally don't disagree with what you're saying, though I'd add to it with the caveat that in most cases the best thing the Government can do to help restore people to self sufficiency is to get out of their way. Social programs to provide help to those who need it are good and noble programs, but there need to be safeguards to prevent them from either becoming permanent or providing an incentive to rely on them rather than make an effort to get to self sufficiency. That's really hard to do, which is why it's just better to try to promote economic conditions that encourage people to elevate themselves.

Please tell me that Facebook post was joking. I mean, I'm inclined to assume it was, but I'm aware enough of where our culture is heading to know that there's a chance it wasn't.

I have found (6 kids and counting, the oldest turning 26 today and the youngest is a yea and a half old) that I've bonded the closest when I am both fun AND a disciplinarian. I'm firm, sometimes you could even say I'm mean. I lay down the rules and I'm quite strict. I punish swiftly and without hesitation. (Usually that means revocation of privileges, grounding, toys taken away, etc.) I have a practiced and highly effective "daddy voice" that brooks no talkback. I am an authoritative (not authoritarian) parent. BUT That's balanced with my always listening to my kids when they need to express themselves. I engage in activities with them, like building/launching model rockets, wrestling with them, teaching them things like fixing cars or building a Space Marine suit, we work on models and miniatures together, I share my childhood loves with them, and how to program computers. My 10-year-old daughter becomes distraught if she doesn't get her "daddy time" every evening, where we talk, watch funny videos, work on her science projects, etc. My youngest son (7) likes to hang out with me in the activity room because he can ask me for help and/or advice when working on his plastic models. I allow them to play video games on my gaming computer I built last year, and they help me with my hobbies. That quality time together is spent laughing and playing around. We even occasionally get really goofy, like when I instigated a food fight at the end of dinner one evening last week when momma was at work 😎 All of my kids and I are very close because kids crave discipline, and they crave positive attention, and a balanced parent gives them both. That's how kids know you love them. You not only let them have fun and play, but you provide them with a framework for how that play needs to happen (nobody getting injured, no property being damaged, etc.) Disciplining a child shows them you love them every bit as much as giving them a gift or letting them have a privilege. And you know what? They do perceive it that way. The most important thing though, is be consistent. No matter what you do or how you do it, if you're consistent, it's better than having a wildly inconsistent approach. I'm a strict disciplinarian but not once has any of my kids ever told me they hated me, or been afraid to tell me how they're feeling. Even when I'm furious at them, I let them give me their side (as long as it's not talking back. There's a difference, and my kids know what it is.) And sometimes I'm wrong. When I'm wrong, I back down and apologize because that too is a valuable lesson to teach the kids. Set an example. Apologies for rambling, the short version is this: Disciplining your kids will strengthen your bond with them, not weaken it. They need you to be their parent, not their friend. They've got plenty of friends but only two parents.

How many is it worth having? As more and more streaming services pop up, it's becoming more and more expensive to keep a wide range of options when it comes to content. Making matters worse, some of those services make you watch commercials even though you're already paying for the service itself. Individually, they cost around 10 or 15 bucks per month, but it adds up fast. Additionally, unless you're watching on a smart TV or a game console, you still need a cable box that allows applications to be installed on it in order to access the streamed content. My household is in a fortuitous place at the moment... We have Netflix as part of our cable package, we have Hulu as part of our cell phone package, and Amazon Prime Streaming comes with Amazon Prime, so we aren't paying individual subscriptions for any of those at the moment. I can't help thinking though, that this is meant to get one used to having these services, and eventually they'll separate out so you have to pay for them individually again. When that happens, I refuse to pay almost $50 a month for three services just to try and get the widest variety of content. Add to that Disney's plans to do its own streaming service, pulling channels out of cable packages (like ESPN). Oh, and CBS All Access wants me to pay a subscription to watch Star Trek Discovery. (As if) Maybe I'm just an old grognard, but I remember a time when TV was free, paid for by advertising. Then cable came out and you got a plethora of channels to choose from, and the only think that cost extra was premium channels. Maybe on some level this is just the 21st Century version of the same thing. I think my gripe is that I really don't watch much TV per se. I watch a lot of movies, documentaries and old TV shows but it's rare that I pay any attention to contemporary content. Even so, if I wanted to follow just the 5 things I care about, I would need to have: Cable (sometimes with the extra sports channels package, depending on the provider, to watch IndyCar) Disney streaming (to get ESPN for watching Formula 1) CBS All Access if I want to watch Discovery HBO if I want to watch Game of Thrones Netflix to watch Voltron The result is that I could very easily spend between $130 - $150 a month just to watch 5 programs. Nope. Not worth it. If I'm left with just Voltron and IndyCar, with F1 viewed through an app ($3/mo), then so be it.

So if I were a betting man, I'd grudgingly put money on Rossi for the championship this year. I'm a Scott Dixon fan, but his championship wasn't based on a lot of wins, it was based on consistency. He was on the podium in almost every single race, even though he didn't come in first very often. Rossi was looking very strong and very consistent toward the end of the season. His biggest enemy, I think, was bad strategy and occasional hotheadedness. If the team has addressed those issues, he's going to be a real threat. Also, am I the only one who is irritated at Fernando Alonzo wanting to stroll in and try to grab the Indy 500, without paying the dues of racing in the series? He tried that garbage in 2017 and I giggled like a schoolgirl when he blew his engine.

I may just purchase the membership in the F1 app, which would allow me to watch the races on a device. When we first moved into our house in February of 2017, we got Comcast. I couldn't watch any of the races I wanted to because NBCSports and ESPN were both part of a channel package that would have cost a lot of extra money a month, and none of the other channels in the package interested me. I got by on watching IndyCar on YouTube (Legit. Verizon IndyCar would post the race a day or two after, and I didn't really mind waiting.) and I'd just follow F1 on my device, on a $3/mo paid subscription that I canceled as soon as the racing season was over. Then in 2018 we switched to Verizon, and t hose channels were included in the package we got. So on race days, we could watch together as a family and it really became an event. For the Indy 500 we got pizza and snacks, and decided from then on that would be like our Superbowl. (We don't give a fig about NFL in my house.) IndyCar is still on NBCSports and ABC, so no problem there for 2019, but now suddenly Disney decides that I have to pay them an extra subscription if I want to watch F1 on my TV this year. Am I getting a discount from Verizon now that the package I have will include less content? Betcha I won't. That's the issue I have with the streaming services popping up all over. Individually they're inexpensive, but the more spread out the content gets, the more streaming services you have to pay for, and that adds up FAST. So this year, if I lose ESPN on my cable, I'm going to just pay for the F1 subscription through the app. I'm not giving Disney a dime.

That's true. That level of poverty exists everywhere, to one degree or another. The issue here is whether or not "Not being born into poverty" is some kind of human right. The point I'm trying to make is that before one makes a claim like that, they need to define what they mean by poverty.

That's something I find infuriating. We're all patient with peoples' kids because we have to be, and we understand. But there's a certain unspoken understanding that you're still going to make the effort to keep your kids under control as best you can. My wife once took our baby to the mom's room to feed her. She'd just fallen asleep when another parent came in with their kid, who I believe was round 4 years old. The kid was making a bunch of noise, slapping the wall over and over, and immediately woke our baby up. What did the other mom do? Just smiled with that "ain't he cute?" look, utterly oblivious to the fact that he'd just woken up the baby. That same kid could often be seen running up and down the steps to where the Bishopric sat. I think somebody must have spoken to them, because lately it's been a LOT better.

Then forgive me, I misunderstood what you meant.

Yeah I'm guessing you missed the part where I said something like that when reading my post.

I'd rather you not assume I'm ignorant when interpreting my posts, brother. The point you're making here is exactly what I'm getting at. People in this country talk about poverty as if real poverty was being unable to afford more than one TV in the house and having to buy generic cigs instead of Marlboros. The reason I asked @Tyme to define poverty was to see if they understood this. My father grew up in Ecuador, and not in the upscale part, either. I've been to where he grew up. It's like going back a century and a half in terms of technology. My grandparents lived in a 2 story concrete and rebar structure with no glass in any of the windows, as the climate was mild enough that it wasn't a priority. They did eventually get steel security bars over the windows, and that was the big upgrade. The toilet was in an outhouse on the side of the building and you had to draw a bucket of water to pour into the top tank when it came time to flush. That bucket being drawn from a well in front of the house because running water just wasn't a thing. My grandparents had 12 children, and all of them worked at a young age performing manual labor to support the family, though my grandfather did insist thta his children receive an education, which they did. My father was the only one who emigrated to the United States. The rest of his siblings ultimately bought houses in the city of Guayaquil all in the same neighborhood. One had a house built from cinder blocks and a dirt floor. Another had a nicer house in that it had a tile floor and, one fine day, hot water by means of an electrical heater attached to the shower head. Oh, and no glass in any of those windows either, until many years later. Eventually one of my uncles even had enough money to buy himself a 20 year old pickup truck. My grandmother went to her grave believing the Moon landings were a hoax because she could not conceive of the kind of technology that was used to do it. To many people in our country, in our time, that's abject poverty, and I was curious to see if that was the kind of poverty @Tyme was referring to. Because you know what? My dad's family never considered themselves to be in abject poverty. They still had it better than a lot of others, and were self sufficient, so they didn't need a bunch of money. They were never hungry, as far as I know, and always had clothing to wear. They were a happy family, and remained close throughout their lives. So they were poor, but by our standards, not theirs. So when I start hearing somebody making what sound to me like ignorant statements regarding quality of life as an excuse, I start, not by assuming they're ignorant, but by asking if they know what poverty really is.

The season begins next month! So I understand with Disney trying to launch its own streaming service, I'll now have to subscribe to that in order to get ESPN and watch the races this year? Anybody else heard about this?

I LOVE that book. C.S. Lewis really had a knack for expressing wisdom in a very accessible way.

Have you guys noticed that new series on Netflix called 'Lucifer?' I have no desire to watch it, but it's apparently a TV show about Lucifer as the protagonist. Yeah, here we are guys. We live in a world that unironically casts the Devil as the good guy on a TV show. (Unsurprising, I suppose, given everything else that' s going on.)

It's hard to be Langdon Cobb, ain't it?

I'm still in the game, just feeling discouraged about other things.

I watched a documentary yesterday which, I'd actually seen before but forgotten. It was called "For the Love of Spock," about he life and career of Leonard Nimoy, written and directed by his son, Adam. It was pretty good. Seems like Mr. Nimoy was a pretty good guy, and had a lot of talents. I think they overestimated the importance of Spock to the overall Star Trek success, but that's understandable, and I'll concede that it wasn't by much.

My problem is that the instant gratification desire is massive, and everything else feels far away. I have goals for what I'd do if I could slim down. I want to go skydiving. I want to drive an open-wheel racer car (There's a track nearby and you can pay them to let you drive one). I want to ride rollercoasters again. These are all things that aren't currently an option. They're also things I've lived without for a very long time, and when I'm stressed or in a depressed mood they seem impossibly far away so maybe that burger and fries don't really matter so much and... boom. I'll close this post here before it turns into a pity party. Suffice it to say some recent events have me in a mindset where I don't have too many craps to give right now.

No biking for me today. Freezing rain, ice and snow. Confession: My heavy bag is in place, but is surrounded by mostly empty boxes and debris. My first workout will be excavating it, which I have not yet done. I will commit to doing that tonight.

Can I say "My ex wife?" In seriousness, I agree with @mikbone. The genius of Pacino's portrayal of Satan in Devil's Advocate is laid out when he points out that at every turn, he openly, verbally recommended the proper course of action to the protagonist while at the same time setting out lures to keep him following the desired path. That way, in the end, he could say "Hey, I didn't force you to do anything." And he is correct. The protagonist was in full control of his own agency the entire time, and thus bears the responsibility for all the tragedy and heartache that ensued. I think that's spot on. It's a fantastic example of the paving of the road to Hell. We all have our Achilles' Heel when it comes to temptation, and all Satan has to do is toss out opportunities for temptation. He doesn't do anything by force. He can't, or even if he could it wouldn't be a win for him. If he forces us to do bad things, then we don't bear the responsibility... we were forced. That's not sin, that's being a victim. In order for us to sin, in order for us to do what he'd want us to do, we have to choose it for ourselves. Then we're being disobedient to God, because we used our agency to distance ourselves from him.

I can't believe this train wreck is still chugging. After 7 pages @Junior still thinks he knows better than his priesthood leaders and all of us here. He didn't come here for advice, guys. He came here for validation. A pack of internet anonymous forum posters ain't gonna be the ones to change his mind.

What an utterly materialistic argument. "Better dead than poor, amirite? Pass me the caviar, Charleston." Define what you consider to be such abject poverty that non-existence is preferable.

So this is the part where I reach out like a fallen alcoholic to their AA sponsor. The last few days have been a disaster. I don't just mean I fell of the wagon. I mean I took a full-on nosedive and am being dragged behind the wagon face down on a dirt road traveled by horses. I was going to try and think of a funny way to tell the story but I've got nothin'. Weighed myself last night to see the damage. Not so good, that.