Went to see Birthday Massacre last night.

I've described them to friends who would likely never see Birthday Massacre as "if Sisters of Mercy had Cyndi Lauper up front instead of Andrew Eldritch." Live? More like "If Cheri O'Teri needed to come up with a band to perform live on Goth Talk."

Frankly, it was delightful. I cut my teeth when Goths mostly did lots of drugs, smoked lots of cigarettes and showed up largely naked because we were young and tragic and looked good with electrical tape over our nipples. The Podlings at the show last night get out so little that they applauded the soundcheck. They were a heavy bunch, "house goths" if you will. And they were there to see one of the dorkiest performances I've ever seen and they LOVED it. So how could I not?

Lead singer at one point commented that their first live show in Seattle was at that club eighteen years previously. Eighteen years previously? The sound system I'd put in that club was already seven years old. I was in there doing some maintenance last year 'cuz I had the time and some asshole had pop-riveted the XLR connectors in the stage snake. Who would do such a thing? Flash back to me in 1998, no time to get to Radio Shack to buy tiny shitty little screws, first opening 45 minutes away: "by the time this needs to be dealt with I'll be long gone."

Overheard a conversation of a couple young men. One proclaiming he was born in 1996, the other responding 1997. To me, this club is the fourth or so iteration since I was mixing. To them? It is an unchanging fixture, like CBGB's or something. The amps that make things loud were hauled there in the trunk of my Honda, back when Clinton was president. My buddy, who I used to work for and now I get into NAMM, jokingly tried to sell me his business as he's sold his house and is trying to decamp to Reno. I told him I didn't want to buy it in '96 why would I buy it now? He said "you should have! It was profitable until 2005 or so."

Started looking around. No, I didn't recognize anyone. Of course I didn't, back when we smoked cloves and wore corsets these fuckers were nursing. And I mean, I weigh 30lbs more but wear the same size pants. I got there in a Porsche, guestlisted in, drank Maker's Mark without giving the first fuck what it cost and came home to a woman hotter than anyone in that entire club. Parking wasn't even hard. My clothes don't even smell.

Here's to you, podlings. Rock out with your nopleasekeepitinyourpants. My boots are older than you, and you still flirted with me, for which I thank you.

These sanguine musings are utterly unrelated to telling my sister yesterday that I didn't want to hear about my mother until the coyotes scattered her bones

Update: Didn't lose my job. Got a bonus and a raise.

Kinda baffled.

I did one more run and a couple of shorter ones to Lublin and Cracov over the weekend. Both car and I need a break. Might try to do it over weekends from now on. Though, really, judging by the sounds it keeps making, I'd better have someone competent look at it for a change.

Having an almost entirely passive understanding of Ukrainian (and, in the case of our guests, Polish) is an ongoing problem. We're using English with the younger ones and German-English with the aunt, which is odd as hell at times. We're doing what we can to make them feel welcomed, but they're still in shock and not entirely settled. And absolutely understandably so, just hope we're not pushing anyone.

After some consideration, I applied to a few IT-sec organizations but don't expect much to come out of it.

Today I had to take Uber to work because I completely blanked on a workshop presentation and did the slides on the back seat. It's actually a fun, largely-informal exercise, and the topic can be pretty much whatever 30-minute problem you think would interest a room full of physics post-grads and above. In my case, it was a couple of constructions following from Euclid Elements' book I, V, and VI, like hyperreals, angle algebras, and complex numbers. It's funny that it took until XIX century for mathematicians to stop using explicit infinities, only to discover it results in much more elementary, albeit epsilon-delta driven, maths. The step from Euclid to modern maths can be smaller than from Euclid to Euler, but only with the benefit of hindsight.

My reading list finally moved to the much-awaited "Beyond a Pale Horse" and other stuff by the conspiracy nutjob Milton William Cooper. The contents are by large not new to me, between games, books, X-Files/Lone Gunmen, and digging into similar stuff on the internet when I'm bored, but it's a concentrated infodump. Not a guilty pleasure by far; I love this nonsense.

The last week's chess puzzle seemed to prod people to respond both here and in private, so here's another one.

Same as before: checkmate in two, White begins. Think what Black's response should be before your second move.

Solution to last week's puzzle..

Dunno if I can make it into a regular thing, but why not try?

A person I know almost died on a mountain recently. A person I don't know, who was climbing with this person, did die on that mountain. Took 32 mountain SAR volunteers and heavy equipment to rescue both people off the mountain.

Sigh