Eeek a Teen!

Well it has taken One nigh on a month to make one's way to Acceptance that Hulk is now a teen firmly entrenched in our household.

Unlike her earlier days as a small child, the house is now replete with grunting communication, a lack of listening, carelessly discarded personal things, and many a strange smell.

Still it is quite an accomplishment for Salsa Girl and I to have survived, not only the party of a dozen teenlings, but also the whole growing up process.

Thankfully, now that we have a small adult, the hard years are now behind us.

Bonus Octogenarian

In more recent weeks we have had a visit to celebrate a more longevitical occasion for Doctor David. He and Grannie A visited for several days of milder celebrations which filled the house with merriment, garrulous communication, loquacious listening, absent-mindedly discarded personal things, and sweet smells of sustenance.

All in all a good month for significant celebratory activities.

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A Cheating X

One has completed the latest in ones A to Z of Unread SciFi and Fantasy Authors being the "X" entry.

One's choice de jour, and a timely one at that, given there are televisual serials about it in the wild presently, was The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

As you can see, the rules had to be bent a touch to allow for this selection.

The Rules  

Titles should be in the sci-fi and fantasy realms, or speculative fiction if you prefer.

The Author's Surname should begin with the letter that One is upon, and they should be one who's wares one has not sampled before.

I found it interesting, with a little of the feel of a translated work, and also a touch of 'what the' weirdness.

Three and a half stars, and one will pursue the further pair of volumes in the saga.

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Sandro Season

Well the season of The Great Sandro is well and truly underway. In fact sportsball may be nigh halfway over already, such is the speed at which life flies by One these days. Why it hardly seems a day since One shook the dust off The Tales and yet, apparently, it has been more than a lunar cycle.

In any case, as well as purveying stereovisual sportsball presentations - and even one purely auditory occasion - One has been making the sacrificial journeys to worship at the temples of sportsball once again this year. Of course one was accompanied by The Great Sandro and his nigh constant chatter about the game, life happenings in general, and "Phill don't you think that should have been a free kick back in the first quarter".

The most recent pilgrimage was thanks to the timely supply of golden tickets by Lofty and involved one finally achieving long-deserved admittance to the Reserved section.
It turned out to be a bit of a letdown as One found found it to be just the standard section with a reserved chair cover at the end of every row.

The game itself was a tense bought of okay for 3 quarters and then a ridiculous celebration for the final quarter.

One was buzzing for the entirety of the journey home - although in hindsight the buzzing may have just been The Great Sandro chatting away.

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Dusting this thing off

Well one has been feeling the lack of ones nonsense outlet for almost a year now so I shall dust it off and commence once again irregularly regaling you with Cautionary Tales of Libraryland IT, gaming, reading, sportsball, and a life lived in these strange times with the many wonderful characters which one happens to interact with throughout said lived life.

A Thriller of a Twitch-worthy Read

One has just finished reading Upgrade by Blake Crouch, an XMAS gift from Grannie A, and I found it to be a reasonably enjoyable techno-thriller worth a 3 star rating.

What I did love about it was the way it made me think about all the upgrades it proposed and their consequences. Which left me with several perplexations and frustrational feelings.

First is several times throughout proceedings where it seems highly implausible that acting faster can give the advantages the protagonist enjoys. For example, and I may be incorrect here but, I don't think being fast would mean one could fire twelve shots from a pistol within 1 second, surely the mechanical parts of the pistol would put a limit on such shenanigans? 
One believes this is a case of the author erring on being too specific here in order to push the upgraded nature of the protagonist, i.e. compare and contrast:

• I squeezed off 12 shots within a second before they could react
• I squeezed off 12 shots before they could react

The big one that got to me throughout the story is that it so totally buys in to the belief that everything we have ever experienced is saved in our brains in perfect 3D HD detail with surround sound and smellovision but is locked away somehow.
Now One could easily have accepted that "perfect" memory was achieved by the eponymous Upgrade and from that point onwards, but found it constantly irritating that the beliefs on memory ran so counter to current research that has memory being akin to storing a series of dot points about events that we update and change every time we review the memory.

The second big one involves the ending so spoilers ahead.

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(highlight to read)

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The Epilogue has several issues to it. Firstly there is the fact that we were earlier told his rapid upgrade would burn him out and kill him and yet here he is 3 years later all fine and dandy and overseeing the "correct" upgrade to humanity.

Secondly is the un-ironic (as far as I can read into it) horrific ending whereby he is force upgrading humanity, not with intelligence that will still leave people doing evil, which was the "wrong" way, but with empathy for all of humanity not just your closest 150ish people. The horror being that this is most likely going to leave humanity in empathic paralysis as they consider the impact of everything on everyone.

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Apparently hone of his other books - Dark Matter - is a currently a TV series (but not the good Canadian sci-fi Dark Matter series). One wonders whether it will also cause one to twitch throughout proceedings.

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The Sportsball Traditions

One's past fortnight has been punctuated with sportsball traditions.

The first was the annual ANZAC day watching at one's residence, with Sneaky Pete, and The Great Sandro putting in their traditional appearance at the event. Salsa Girl also continued her tradition of recent years of watching alongside and, dare I say it, getting caught up in the parochial tribalism along with the rest of us.

While a drawn result is a fine tradition that one believes belongs in the sport, one was left feeling a little flat, and even Salsa Girl was questioning - "is that allowed?!?"

One's other brush with footy tradition was this Friday past. It was, however, a change in tradition, with circumstances and work weariness resulting in only Salsa Girl and oneself partaking in watching the traditional rivalry in a quiet, laid back comfort of our own lounging room. The relaxed atmosphere did not last for very long with the resultant match keeping one on edge for most of it's duration - including a point with nary 4 minutes to go when one's racing heart was audible to the room!
In the end things did calm down when a true and just result was reached.

This weekend did also continue another long-standing tradition with One making the traditional regular journey to the ancestral home to make adjustments to Freeloading Mum's printer.

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A W in the Second Decade

No this is not about One's very own A W aka Hulk in her second decade - it is instead about entering Decade the Second of one's A to Z of Unread SciFi and Fantasy Authors endeavour, and how One has completed the read of the 'W' tome.

This one had spent many years staring at One from the unread books shelf at home.

The tome in question is The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks, the first of his Night Angel Trilogy.

I found it an enjoyable enough read and will likely get around to the other two volumes in the coming years. It did dabble in a bit of predictable fantasy fare, however it has been a while since one dabbled so it seemed a fun 3 and a half star read.

For those wondering about the letters missed in One's... interlude,

U was eventually skipped and put in the too hard basket,

V was the Planet of Adventure omnibus by Jack Vance

Next in the AtoZ series will be an X , or more likely, another skip as it does seem likely to be another troublesome letter, but we'll see.

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But the Tales Came Back, the Very Next Year

So, it has been a year to the day of hiatus for The Tales. This has been a long enough span for one to have a garnered a sense of their lack, with the conclusion that one shall once again be regaling you with regular Cautionary Tales.

Now, to catch everyone up, here are the high mid and lowlights of the missing year, in more or less chronological order:

• One's place of prominence in the nuptials of Pirate Dave and LED - particularly in the karaoke vows scene
  
  
• One’s ongoing stressful tussles with printers
  
  
• Farewelling Piggy with BestFriendSincePrep, Uncle Col and various other high school alumni
  
  
• The second annual hosting of Mt Disappointment at StumpyRudolph's since it restarted - it seems this is becoming an annual event much like The Tales
  
  
• One’s becoming a permanent fixture at the new workplace after three and one half years living on the crumbs of rolling contracts
  
  
• Further stressful tussles with printers
  
  
• The addition of Harvey to our family after a years wait on the production of this new hybrid wonder.
  
  
• An annual visit down South to My Guitarist
  
  
• A dodgy knee issue of One’s resolved by this new thing called an exercise regime
  
  
• Catching up with Mr Gates after some 30 odd years
  
  
• The continuing saga of stressful printer tussles
  
  
• The stressful journey to a Magpies premiership
  
  
• A bout of shingles brought on by unknown stress factors
  
  
• Freeloading Mum celebrating her 80th milestone
  
  
• Attending the NYE fireworks (early version) in the city with Hulk and Salsa Girl
  
  
• Yet another holiday week on the Berm
  
  
• A busy work schedule with new libraries, major upgrades, and, of course, printers
  
  
• Handy Dad miraculous coming out of a fall through the patio roof with naught but a few scratches and bruises, and maybe some lessons learned about capabilities of older gentlemen on ladders, and roofs. Maybe.
  
  
• Sportsball season starting again far too soon.
  
  
• New varieties of stressful printer tussles

So there you have it, the foundation for the restart of regular Tales posting. Only time will tell if One will be able to maintain this punishing ambitious annual publication schedule.

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Got got or not?

 So over the past several years one has not got got - unless one has a legendarily robust immune system, which given one's valiant, but ultimately futile, struggles against the many waves of  man-cold encountered in ones lifespan, seems extremely unlikely.

However in recent weeks a “relatively” close acquaintance that one spent some significant face to face gaming time with was got got.

Hearing of this may have caused One to spontaneously suffer psycho-somatic got symptoms for a day or so, skipping in-person gaming and, much to the disappointment of The Great Sandro, the first planned footy expedition of the year. 

In the end One is not sure of One's got got status as, throughout one's period of convalescence, nigh on a half dozen got tests all came back not got, so who really knows if One was got got or not got got.

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Catching Up

So One is once again faced with having to catch up on happenings by having a catching up post which details all of One's catching up of recent times and should, hopefully, catch us all up on all things catch-upable.

We start our Tale many weekends in the past...

Suits You to Catch Up

First was the occasion of a fancy suit fitting in preparation for the incoming nuptials festival for Pirate Dave. It was an enjoyable endeavour but one does have to bak at describing it as excellent service when such terms as concealment, de-accentuate, hide, and work-around, were used so extensively during One's segment of the fitting.

Catching Up with Dromana Queen

The very next day Salsa Girl and I made a long haul drive to assist Hulk in attending a peer's birthday party. There was food and fun and also our first, and last, beach frolic of the summer, accompanied by the chatter of the teeth of many tweens that refused to exit the water.

Continuing into the next week...

Caught up by printers

One has been relieved to be entering the final stages of one's infinite printer rollout at work. However one did, after a hard days printering, find oneself caught up in a troubleshooting visit to attempt to deal with Freeloading Mum's home printer conundrum. Needless to say, an episode of madness ensued.

And the weekend...

Gardening catch up

One has gotten behind in One's maintenance of the garden and so it was that one caught up on the task by the expediency of having BestFriendSincePrep scour away the existing garden and commence a complete rebuild.

A Birthday board game to catch up on plays

For One's spawning celebrations this year I exercised the well known rule that guests must play whatever game I choose - whether they like it or not! In this case I rolled out Falling Sky a game of Caesar and the Gauls, for the first time since 2019. Pirate Dave won again - even though he had gone home and his tribe ran as a scripted opponent - so I shall be putting it away for another four years.

The gaming to dos...

Catching the Space Bug again...

The Tuesday Knights roleplaying group that meets on Wednesdays, commenced a new game that is a return to one's favourite - Traveller.

Catching a moment...

One, sadly was at a commemorative for a work associate - a fellow IT Man In LibraryLand - who passed far too early. One had bantered IT on many, many occasions over the years with him and sought advice on many a topic when in tricky IT situations. His full life story was quite a humbling experience and one can see that his family and friends will miss him dearly. Vale John.

The weekend again...

Catching the imagination...

One has long imagined reclaiming a part of one's desk from the accoutrements of working from home that have long laid claim to such prized realestate. Thus time was finally found to undertake a desk rearrangement and now the WFH things are the temporary items moved into and out of place as required. And now the gloriously revealed desktop space is finally awash with piles of gaming paraphernalia.

A quick catch of the fleetingly in town...

Circumstances aligned well enough for One to make a catch-up with Lord of the Small Fries. This was also blessed with the attendance of The Administrator, Supervisor Grand Chief K, and The Fox. Much was discussed in a throwback to our great days and it shall have to happen much more frequently.

And back at the old stomping ground...

Catching the changes

One attended an IT in libraries meeting at ones old home in Sandringham. While there One was lucky enough to catch up with Criket Cutter, Sonja Roster Queen,  Country Girl, and The Maple Maverick. One decided to head North and stomp around Brighton some as well, managing to catch Longstride L and The Historical Menace in the building.

So there you have it. Did you catch it all?

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Clown Parking

 So, for the holidays it is the endeavour of Salsa Girl and Oneself to provide experiences for Hulk. In a previous holiday - during the times of no Tales - an expedition was mounted to experience the possibilities of the famous Luna Park.

This previous expedition went reasonably well despite the icy winds of winter, the cranky overwhelmed-ness of Hulk, and the annoyingness of crowds being where we were, and so it came to be that a return expedition was requested for these current holidays.

One was quickly volunteered to be the parent to oversee this event and, having carefully assayed the day of lowest sun occurrence for the week, Hulk and oneself set off for this experience on the morn of yesterday.

The day started out refreshingly pleasant but soon enough the clouds lifted and  the sun was blazing down - making it a not great environment for those such as I who suffer from the torment of the evil burny sun.

Anyway, the various rides and activities went well until Hulk decided that her new favourite ride was the one that required queuing in the sun for twenty minutes between goes. Having done the maths One knows that this resulted in over an hour standing in direct sunlight. Fun indeed.

After a long day and a short(ish) paddle at the nearby beach we made the journey home to have a not too late bedtime for a tired hulk.

One is now enjoying the gift of several days recovering from queue related body disturbance. And, as everyone knows, a case of QRBD is not very pleasant at all.

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Neglected Blogs

There are two things that One really dislikes - those that neglect their blogs, and hypocrisy.

So one has been a little busy and unable to update you all for... 5 months!! It seems one's May prediction of a return to regular posting - for extremely wide-apart values of regular - was beyond accurate.

Ironically one of the main reasons One was not able to keep updating the Cautionary Tales of the IT Man in Libraryland was because of one's nigh-all consuming project to configurate and physicalise inked paper producing devices for general public stakeholder use, to a timeline that seemed generous at the beginning but in the end proved to be ludicrous. Whew, don't get me started, the Tuesday Knights gaming group made that mistake once. Once.

In any case, even though one is dubious of this time of resolutions - (if you want to make a change just make that moment of decision the change point) - One is going to resolve to return once again to the fertile soil of The Tales and regale you with the peculiar goings on and cautions that you must be so existentially missing.

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I AM (not) THE LAW!

 So it seems that despite calling One in to do One's civic duty, the state has decided that One is not required for the dispensing of justice.

CCTV of me reporting for duty.

After several hours of catch up reading in the Jury Pool room - sans swimming pool I might point out - one was hauled in to be a potential juror but not even "randomly" chosen to be considered!

One suspects it has something to do with one's voice catching, breaking, and squeaking,  at the moment of having to stand up and announce present. One earned a disdainful second look from the Judges assistant for that.

In any case, even though i came fully prepared to be a major cog in the Justice Department, they denied me from serving with such dismissive phrases as : "Sir, this is for Jury service only, we mentioned nothing about Judge, Jury, and Executioner" and "Sir you cannot wear that helmet in here!"

I suspect there is something afoot at the department and shall remain vigilant!

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Starting again

 So, it seems that One is forestalled from starting regular posting by an internalised desire to summarise all that has occurred previously before continuing onwards with shorter posts. Well, no more will that internal barrier stop me as I shall shove it aside and jump straight to the latest happenings, and the past can take care of itself.

So, the grand annual camping tradition known as Mt Disappointment was restarted this weekend past. Avid readers will remember our last resurrection was in 2015 after the annual-ness of the annual event ended with the 2009 trip.

This year saw the core group of Oneself, StumpyRudolph, MrRogers, and BestFriendSincePrep, joined by a handful who didn't have the gumption to stay the full night: Gavman, The Electric Tiger, and M. Sneaky Pete had excused himself on the grounds of having an important family birthday do on for Mirri Cat Warrior, but I ask you what family is more important, family you have known for nigh on 50 years, or family that you have known for only exactly 12 years to the day?!?

Sigh.

Anyway, we have become a lot more at ease with comfort and seem to have permanently moved the event to StumpyRudolph's property which provides a modicum of extra comforts. Easier road and track access meant that such things as a spit roast and many lights, tables and shelters could be festooned upon the revellers. In fact all that was missing was toileting facilities. Thankfully we were all afforded the get back to nature opportunity that their lack entails.

The increased maturity also lead to an enjoyable night of medium level indulgence rather than the traditional overindulgence. It does appear our bodies are very thankful for the change and it may just become the new normal.

We were also blessed with the weather holding off until we were all packed up and homeward bound - even with BestFriendSincePrep giving us an exciting flat battery challenge to overcome - another set of changes from the traditional drizzled to death of the morning after wherein it was usually one's own conveyance that provided the exciting challenges.

All in all a great time and, in the words of BestFriendSincePrep, now 100% guaranteed to be back as an annual event.

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Mayday, Mayday…

This is Freeloading Phill blog.

calling anyone . . .

Mayday, Mayday . . . we are under apathy . . .

regular* posting is gone . . .

Comments section not responding

Mayday . . . losing posting pressure fast

calling anyone . . . please help . . .

This is Freeloading Phill blog . . .

Mayday . . .

                                    Blogerrer

So, One’s "short" holiday break is finally over and one is gearing up to once more go into the blogch for the resumption of regular* posting.

Please enjoy ones homage above, to the classic role playing game, Traveller, as the sign of many more Cautionary Tales to come.

* for extremely wide-apart values of regular

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Freedom Days

 One is pleasantly surprised to see so many celebrations of freedom these past weeks.

It is quite humbling to see what seems like the whole world turning out to celebrate one's two year anniversary of being freed from the dictatorial control of Supervisor Grand Chief K.

Yes, it's hard to describe the sense of relief one can feel when such a yoke is removed and one has to no longer kowtow to the completely unreasonable demands that actual work be done and projects be completed.

It is sad to no longer be "working" with the likes of Sister Serials, Psycho Chicken, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, The Maple Maverick, Lord of the Small Fries, Longstride L, Bomber Babe, LibraryBFF, Sidekick, Days of our Libraries, The Administrator, Roysgirl, Sonja Roster Queen, and Mr Prada - but they too had their incomprehensible demands that things be fixed, technology be made to work, procedures written up, and could one please stop eating all the cake in the staff kitchen.

So, here's to one's freedom, may it be everlasting!

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Time for T

Well it has taken more than 6 months for One to get to the 'T' of one's A to Z of Unread SciFi and Fantasy Authors.

This one came from one's large to-read shelf and was Six Moon Dance by Sheri S. Tepper

If you fancy novels that begin as exploration of alternate societal gender role set-ups and then pivot effortlessly into mass mind sex with space moths then this is the story for you. Similarly, if you like getting to the end of the story and exclaiming how it has ended so far removed from the beginning, then this may also be the story for you.

For the rest of us, it will still be an interesting 3 and a half star read.

Next in the AtoZ series will be a U of which there are Nil on one's shelf, so a future crowd sourcing will be needed shortly (for values of shortly approaching 6 months). 

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Meet the New Boss

Well posts to The Tales have continued to be rather sparse, and that is mostly because of my incredibly demanding new boss.

A sudden and swift change occurred many months ago, saddling One with a new boss.

It commenced with a family Saturday afternoon discussion about fostering felines in which Salsa Girl, Hulk and Oneself cautiously decided to fill in an application form to test if we would be acceptable as a fostering household. A scant 24 hours later Frantic Fostering Organisation* called up saying they had a "perfect" one for us, and that it would be no trouble to have it foisted delivered within the hour.

And thus Madame Beans joined us in her 14th year of bossitude.

Madame with Beans on display.

After a brief orientation we were all soon at her beck and call.

As can be seen above she frequently commandeers One's work from home office heater, denying One any humane working conditions.

She is also known to demand that One's work start early in the morning and continue late into the evening.

Madame Beans also refuses to enter into any meaningful dialogue about these working conditions and has even been known to set up circumstances to try and trip One up in the commission of One's tasks.

There is also engagement in inappropriate physical touchings such as foot rubbing, hand licking, and she particularly likes head bumps.

All in all I'm sure you can see the hardships One has to endure for the provision of only meagre purrs of compensation.

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The Fall of Troy

 So One has just completed the reading of Troy by Stephen Fry.  The tome was a birthday gifting from Grandma J that one had finally commenced a few weeks back and then completed a few weeks back. Of course in these times we are in, One glances at the calendar and espies that a few weeks is in fact nigh two whole months!

In any case the read was quite interesting... and informative, and flowed fairly well after the initial 50 odd pages of getting up to speed on past history bombardment of peoples and events.

My reading of it also fell at the right time for the regular Tuesday Knights gaming group had only recently commenced playing AGON the game where you play heroes of legend in an ancient Greece inspired setting.

I give it a solid 3 star rating as the end with the wooden horse seemed a little unbelievable.

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My Guitarist Joins the Club

Well, it's been a long time between drinks and it's also been a long time between drinks.

Both of these shortfalls shall be rectified by this report on One's recent attendance at My Guitarist's "joining the club" soiree (or, as Hulk predicted it, "Boring, just Adults standing around talking and drinking").

Of course, in true tradition of The Tales, "recent" in this case means nigh on a week.

There are those that may claim it would take one that long to recover from one's imbibing a single high strength honeycomb stout, but they have no proof.

Anyway, after a quickish zoom Southwards (that's zoom in the old-fashioned speed sense) one arrived at said event to have a great catch up and natter with the assorted cast. My Guitarist of course, Redneck Ben, Duff (with The Tumbling Trio in tow) and other assorted uni guitarists and associates. Fridgepower, Judge Mingus, and The Keyboardist showed up shortly after oneself as well for a real getting the band back together feel.

One cannot fault an event with friends, free food and crumbiliscious honeycomb stout, other than for not happening on a weekly schedule.

Whilst literally zooming home one's thoughts - other than those on the miraculous performance of one's sportsball team one was listening to on the radio - were on one's hopes to not have to wait quite so long for the next catch-up with My Guitarist et al.
As it turns out One had forgotten about the curse of halfway parties.

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