Hal O'Brien

There are two major problems at LJ:

* They are owned and hosted by a Russian company. So when I write, in all honesty, that I believe the war in Ukraine will do nothing but hurt Russia, leading to a guerrilla war similar to Chechnya, but against an adversary with a 30x larger population and 30x more land… well, it’s unclear if writing that exposes me to punishment under the most recent Russian law that would sentence me to 15 years in prison and a Rbs30,000 ($280) fine. Oh, sure, it’d be tough to enforce, but who needs that hanging over you?

* Given LJs popularity in Russia, could the government just pull the plug? That would mean those archives — which I value a great deal, and have never figured out a different way to backup — would just go {poof!}. I really didn’t want that.

So. Here I am. Who knows, maybe I’ll start writing again.

akirlu has left me on my own recognizance for the weekend, as she's gone off to Spokane on fannish business.

So, I'm going to Café Vignole tonight at 7pm for dinner, and would enjoy it if I had some company. I'm fairly sure, even at this remove, that if you can see this, it'd be great to see you.

Vignole is at Rainier and 57th down in Rainier Beach. Here's my enthusiastic review on Yelp. I really like this place.

We went to see Suzanne Vega at this high school down the street from us. Go figure.

I have successfully been able to move all 1500+ entries from this LiveJournal to my site at http://www.halobrien.com/ I've also been able to do the same with my ~40 posts from my business blog, Not That Kind of Operation (NTKO). With my archives intact and grand unification achieved, that means this will probably be a read-friends-and-comment-sometimes LJ. New posts from me are much more likely to be there than here. (Today's "Dick Cheney has no pulse," for example.)

In related news, given how LJ seems to have just about quarterly crises of confidence somehow, I can report WordPress can import an LJ, comments and all, just fine. Ditto from Blogger. I mean, if you're thinking about such a thing, and have the hosting to match.

The roses were my gift to Ulrika for our anniversary.

"At Apple, we reward excellence -- as long as you're excellently white, and excellently one of the guys."


More at my journal. But let's just say this has been a longstanding problem at Apple.

I won't be doing this at the top of the hour, but at least I'll make it during the hour.

Anyway... I have two relatives who I know fought in The Great War.

Up there is my paternal grandfather, Harold Bruce O'Brien. Written on the original photo is: "Harry O'Brien in Phillipines, 1915."

Which raises an interesting point. See, I have two extant birthdays for Harry. One is from his later records at the Boston PD, for whom he worked for decades after The War. That's Dec 4, 1896, which would make him 18, perhaps 19 in this picture. But then there's this record, which purports to be a copy of a birth certificate, which states him as having been born Harry Raymond O'Brien, on Dec 4, 1899. Which would make him 15, perhaps 16, in this picture.

I suspect Harry changed his name and birthday to get into the Army, and then stuck with it the rest of his life.

The other relative is my maternal great-grandfather, Addison Bright Evans. He joined the Canadian Army -- Service Battalion, CDF, 48th Highlanders.



He joined on August 5, 1917. Which is strange in a bunch of ways. He was naturalized as a US citizen on July 5, 1917. The US entered the war April 6, 1917. So... was he waiting for his naturalization papers to clear? Why did he join in Canada? Why did he give his birthplace as Canada when up until then he'd been saying England, which he'd also say later?

Hey... Who's asking, you know?

My family. Obviously I come by it honestly, from both sides.

Is it for helping Asians? Is it to help you when cooking Asians? Hm. Is great puzzlement.

Nate Silver reports that Washington's senate race may well have national implications this year:

"(T)he most important state of all (in assessing the Republicans' chances of gaining a majority in the Senate) was Washington. Republicans won Washington 88 percent of the time that they won the Senate by a single seat, but only 41 percent of the time that they fell one seat short. The difference there is 47 percent. Washington makes the difference between success and failure almost half the time."

Perhaps there are those who think the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans are no more significant than those between the Blues and the Greens in Byzantium.

I am not among them.

I have faith in the robustness of the American republic, and believe it can survive the turn of the wheel that must inevitably happen and return the Republicans to power eventually.

Still, I hate waste. If the waste of time, effort, blood, and treasure that will ensue after the Republicans' return can be held off legally and ethically as long as possible, through the strength of reason... I can only lend my voice to that call.

Please vote for Patty Murray, and then mail in your Washington ballot, if you're a voter in our state.

The light Kaylee is catching on the corner couch today has been fairly dramatic. More at my Flickr page, but I like this one best.