Quora Question: What is a male ballet dancer called? Is he a ballerino?

Not in the U.S. he isn’t.

It's Up! It's Down! It's Being Worked On...

 On a whim, I tried looking at FaceBook this morning and got 404'd.  I figured that they'd finally had enough of me and canceled my account, but then common sense asserted itself.  If Mark Zuckerberg hasn't permanently banned Wirecutter, Owner-Operator of Knuckledraggin' My Life Away, it's a sure bet that neither he nor his staff are going to bother with me.  So, a little investigation is needed - Ah-Ha!

It seems that FaceBook is not alone.  Instagram is toast, as is WhatsApp, Messenger, and likely others that we aren't seeing here because they are big and important enough.

Downdetector

The Verge

What bothers me about all this is that these are major social media sites, and I would think they'd be able to protect themselves.  One site, maybe it's an inside job.  More than one is an attack, or in this case, a successful attack.  I wonder what else is down that we haven't heard of?

Happy Birthday!

I was born on Thursday, October 2^nd, 1952, at or around 5:30 AM.  I'm 69 years old, which is 25,203 days, and right now I can feel every single day of it.

I'm finally losing weight, which is nice, but I'm running out of energy.  I just don't have it.  I'm going to see if altering my diet somehow will help.

So, for my birthday, good old Migraine One called.  She's still in California (give thanks for that little detail), and she's still married, and now she's back living with her husband again.  I don't know how long the Titanic will float, but hope springs eternal.  Or something.  Anyway, she wished me a happy birthday, then dumped her train wreck of a life all over my floor.  Evidently her health problems are getting worse, leaving her bed ridden for the past three days.  She says she has fibromyalgia, which is a disease that is commonly treated with pills and wine.  Reading up on fibromyalgia syndrome, I discovered that it's a condition of the brain, which causes the brain to amplify pain from other sources.  So, for instance, when you're on your way to the can to take your two o'clock piss and step on a Lego in your bare feet, instead of just swearing and maybe turning on the light, you'd hit the deck and roll back and forth until the agony goes away.  About 1 in 25 people worldwide have fibromyalgia, but women are ten times more likely to get it than men.  I'm thinking this has something to do with sanity, but I may be wrong.

I went to the range today with Big Mike and California Dave.  I did pretty well, all things considered.  I got a chance to test fire my Ruger LCP II, and it really shoots nicely.  I was able to hit stuff with it, and turned in a respectable group.  Big Mike shot his M1, which I wrote about here.  The rifle shoots as good as it looks, and that's saying something.

Later on tonight we're headed out to a four star restaurant for dinner.  I may do a little restaurant review on the place.

My thanks to all of you for reading, and a hoist of the evening bourbon glass and a tip of the old fedora to anyone leaving a comment that says something more than Happy Birthday!

Cultural Diversity in My Neighborhood

Yesterday we made plans to go to the range today, and since the range opens at 9:00 AM and it's a 45 minute drive to the range from Big Mike's house, and it's a half hour drive from my place to Big Mike's, that means that yours truly had to drag his ragged ass out of bed at the unholy hour of 7:00 AM.

Here's what I saw on my way out.

The following pictures and commentary will be offensive to some, but not to others.  Tolerance is a feature that I don't enjoy.  Read at your own risk.  Trigger warning - and I'm not talking about Roy Rogers horse.