KarenKraft

There was a lot of talk about the bruise on her upper thigh. Some hands-on-hips bitch posturing in the kitchen the other night. The next day, in Anton playfully poked the rather nasty looking thigh-bruise. Maybe she wrecked the car, the bike, the wagon, the horse they share. I don't know. All I know is the dramatics started about the same time the bruise showed up. It seems to impact her good humor (which makes sense) but doesn't appear to have anything to do with their personal/sexual relationship.

Here, on my continent, we have a "higher" level of development than Australia and NZ that allows our government to rule by "NewSpeak," (that is "Euphemisms" for you provincial cousins. We learned this foul language growing up in mother England's house.) I don't much cotton to euphemisims, myself, however, and neither do most North American squirrels. In political circumstances, it evokes vehement squirrelly wrath. But yes, much of Russia uses such "re-treated" water; they are accustomed to it apparently, and reports of dysentary and cholera epidemics in Russian territory have not surfaced since Lenin acquired control of the state information resources nearly a century ago. Let's get back to the Ruslan and Katya topic: My interest in getting seriously political about government irresponsibility and water infrastructure is at a boiling point these days, and you certainly would not want to watch little squirrel's head explode... Awww... c'mon, Sr. Squirrel, isn't wonderful to drive along Interstate 5 or Highway 99 and see all those abandoned food crop farms? Those are in the counties that vote a certain way. Now, in some other counties, who vote and contribute another way, the government subsidizes the growing the very same crops that it pays folks in the [u.S.] South NOT to grow. Then, if you haven't been entertained enough, you go to the supermarket and find out how much the prices have gone up due to inadequate production. But that's okay, see, since those pro-government people get a food purchasing break the rest don't get: it's called S.N.A.P.

And some other children were taught by their parents and grandparents to pick pockets, steal, kidnap, change a tire with only a crowbar and a screwdriver, tell fortunes, use cards, bones, and sticks to forecast the future, to turn tricks in the back streets, and so on. Then, after a long day, the whole family would get together and enjoy a relaxed meal, sharing the product of their collective industry.

He's just playing the games nothing more. when he speaks he's using a voice over program with other gamers. So he is just really really bad, in the end he has no life and only really married Alina so he would have someone to take care of him and something warm to hump. And cook his meals. ... and as for cooking his meals: compared to what the other ladies fix for dinner, Alina does a great job. Unlike some of the others, she also cleans the kitchen when she's done. Don't get me started about the sticky-bottom yellow universal boiling pot at Katya's. I can't.

I am sure he has cheated on her a couple of times. Can tell by his actions sometimes when he comes home. Hahahaha. And that's said with no projection, right?

This is very true. I don't live with the dude so it's not my business how he entertains himself. That said, it's sad that he doesn't seem to have much else going for him (again, not my business). The two of them are very affectionate and whenever she wants sex he delivers big time. My guess (and it would only be a guess) is that conversation with Anton might not be sufficiently satisfying for Alina that she would demand it, instead of his being glued to the computer with his headset on.

My my. How refreshing is that? After looking at their relationship, do you think that would be a positive thing?

Katya's kitchen adventures. It's cute. She was unfamiliar with the operation of the automatic dish washing machine and didn't locate the door-frame interlocking lever. After sort of reading the "instructions" on the dishwasher soap and lye packet, she attempted to open one but realized she ought just put it in the compartment on the inner door. So far so good. But even with two telephonic shout-outs, she has yet to lock the door. After a few minutes of pouting she decided to simply sit and wait. Not exactly sure why she removed the utensil caddy -- perhaps to make room for the sticky-bottom yellow universal boiling pot. I think she was absent when they ran the introductory tour of the apartment. But no, asking the slack-jaw boys cluttering up the place would only lead to insults, recriminations, and even more pouting. OMG! This is the most exciting action here in a while! so dishwasher still not running? The sticky bottom universal boiling pot has reappeared which either means the dishwashing machine did its job or that the keystone role said yellow pot plays in their lives required rescuing it from the negative-function machine.

Katya's kitchen adventures. It's cute. She was unfamiliar with the operation of the automatic dish washing machine and didn't locate the door-frame interlocking lever. After sort of reading the "instructions" on the dishwasher soap and lye packet, she attempted to open one but realized she ought just put it in the compartment on the inner door. So far so good. But even with two telephonic shout-outs, she has yet to lock the door. After a few minutes of pouting she decided to simply sit and wait. Not exactly sure why she removed the utensil caddy -- perhaps to make room for the sticky-bottom yellow universal boiling pot. I think she was absent when they ran the introductory tour of the apartment. But no, asking the slack-jaw boys cluttering up the place would only lead to insults, recriminations, and even more pouting. OMG! This is the most exciting action here in a while!

Still, while her return makes this apartment a tiny bit less boring, it didn't take long for them to begin boiling everything again. Psssst - Katya: boil the water BEFORE you put in the raw eggs. 'makes them easier to peel. Yawn.

Oh no! Would that mean that we won't be able to watch Ruslan do his narcolepsy impressions anymore? Why, I haven't this much fun since my next door neighbor (thin walls) got My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade album and played it again and again and again.

Les jeux informatiques d'aujourd'hui ne sont pas réalisés par une seule personne :D Le mythe du concepteur au fond d'un garage a vécu et les Bill Gates ou Steve Jobs/Wozniak ne peuvent plus exister en 2014. C'est toute une équipe, concepteur, infographiste, programmeur, etc. qui participent à la réalisation d'un tel produit et il faut plusieurs mois de conception et beaucoup d'argent. Il joue tout simplement. D'ailleurs Personne n'a jamais vu sur son écran un quelconque outil de développement en C++ ou autre L4G, pas plus que de débogueur. L'imagination est sans limite. Well, okay. That seems right. But I thought he might be reviewing commenting, or looking for errors. It's sort of depressing to thing that he's actually just fucking off all the time.

Oh, if only life were so simple. The complainers never want to break a sweat or pull the laboring oar. They prefer to sit back, relax, and cast aspersions on the politics of those who produce goods and services. See, everyone who makes a buck is evil, by definition. Anyone who takes charge and manages ventures is the same. They have collectively felt that way since 1789. Je devrais être en mesure de regarder la petite pipe gratuitement parce que mon arrogance incroyable exige. Mais attendre, laissez- moi vous parler de la grandeur de nous.

All the stuff that used to be in the bathrooms is still there; same with the stuff in the living room except the collapsable doggie-pen. The only addition to the bedroom is a DeLonghi radiator type space heater on the side of the walkway from the bedroom to the hallway area. The bedroom TV (off camera) in the alcove isn't on -- which is very unusual -- except if they closed everything up to go on a short vacation. Looks like holiday time to me.

Thanks, Van, but if I might: We have two different concepts at play in your auto insurance and phone service examples. Also, we need to remember that retention of current buyers ("loyalty") is more valuable when geography restricts the potential pool of buyers (supermarkets, gas stations) than it is in an amorphic churning global pool of passers-by. In the global pool, it is more important to draw in new people since the marginal cost is much lower than the average cost. And remember that, with respect to insurance, in most places there cannot be a "loss leader" rate. Rates are published and available from governing authorities much of the time. It is not 'ripping off' renewal customers when they (the customers) do not inquire as to any discounts (age, job, miles driven per year, grade point averages for younger drivers, senior safety driving course for older drivers, etc.). Insureds who are too lazy or underinformed so that they don't bother to inquire are not being 'ripped off,' they are not given advantages given to those who press to get a good rate. It is not the job of the company to call the insured to let them know that they should take the free safe-driver course over at the local adult education facility; it is their job to sell business. When the insured has a broker, it is the broker's job to hunt down the best rate, the discounts that would apply, etc. As for the cellular telephone companies: The reason they give a discount on the purchase of a new phone, offer unlimited this or that, family and co-conspirators' discounts, etc. is not to be "nice." It is to get you to sign the one-or-two year contract. As competition challenges their marketing during that contract period, they must offer better deals to new oncoming customers in order to get them to sign up for the same or similar length contracts. They aren't ripping off the existing customers by offering additional incentives to new customers. Consider it a loss leader required by competition in the market place. One of the problems a lot of people have is what I call,"looking at the other person's chip stack." Rather than focusing on the deal they made and planning how to negotiate a better contract for themselves in the future, they spend their time worrying about some other deal some other person got and, as we have discussed before, out comes the dreaded and counterproductive FAIRNESS rule. Let's say, for example, the Army needs artificial intelligence code writers and launches a campaign at the nation's colleges to recruit current students and entice them into committing to four years of service as code writers once they have matriculated. The Army agrees to pay tuition, room, board, and $12 per year for CamCap membership fees in exchange for that commitment. The following year, it is determined that the need for code writers is even greater than they had previously estimated so, in addition to the above "goodies," the Army also pays all new students who sign the very same commitment agreement the first group signed, a brand new hybrid car that runs on spent tofu fumes. The first group is not being ripped off. They are getting the deal they wanted, liked, and agreed to. It is always a waste of time to base ones own situation on the [better] situation of another person. Most people understand this. Many of those who don't, as I have said before, are the folks who majored in Feelings with a minor in Fairness. These are often the same people for whom the only path to equity is equality. That is to say, if everyone doesn't get the same deal on everything everywhere, the system is, by their superficial definition, unfair.

So what do the others have? Reel lives.

Yeah? Who? But I agree: it can be a bit time consuming.

Exactly. All in all, compared to a lot of other pastimes, RLC is very affordable. I hope they prosper and expand their service.

Both of them seem to boil an awful lot of stuff.

I love this! The inevitable clash between the entrepreneurial mindset and the entitlement mindset. I say this not intending to offend anybody in particular, by the way. I have seen this on several other boards. In some, the owners/administrators have an online commentary presence and, periodically, remind members that their business (their board) is not a democracy. I also suspect that there is an age-gap at play on many boards: those people who grew up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s tend to understand the inherent inequities of not owning something they like. If you don't own it, you don't run it. Those born in the 80s and more recently tend to see all things public in terms of "fairness." That thought would never occur to an older person, I suspect. They see a world of choices wherein you go with what you like and pass on what you don't. Market forces decide success and failure, not some quixotic notion of situational fairness. Leaving politics out of the equation, it boils down to this: Many shallow thinking people would support a new law stating that the at-the-pump retail price of gasoline to consumers shall never exceed $1. They "feel" that that is "fair" because the oil companies make zillions of dollars raping the environment on lands historically stolen from the rightful owners and, most importantly, BECAUSE IT'S FAIR. Other people attempt to explain that it costs more than a dollar to deliver that gallon of gasoline to the retail pump so the oil companies would not participate in retail gasoline sales, but instead ship their products to places where such a law does not exist. The reply from the foggy folks is that that is unpatriotic and the oil companies need to step up and do their fair share! There is no way to convince the entitlement-minded that "fairness" doesn't play much of a role in business decisions. "Why, I pay to be a member, so it's unfair that someone who pays to be a premium member gets more than I do!" Great. Nice sentiment. But nobody threw "fairness" into the equation. They balance each decision based on its resulting effect on the company's position on the demand curve. "If we increase video delivery from X to Y, will the increased viewer revenues pay for the additional costs? Will the disappointment of current users result in so much decreased revenue to offset the projected gains from the premium service? Should we open a new website with different apartments and only let Super-Premium Members access those apartments? What will happen if we restrict viewership so substantially that competitive providers enter the marketplace? Will the loyalty of our current viewers be such that we can still compete? Will we need to give open (unpaid) access to a few bedrooms in order to stifle said new competition? Can we make enough money now to be able to afford to purchase the new competitor after it has established a large membership population?" I do not know who owns RLC but I have a strong hunch that, were one to be sitting across the table from him/her and ask what they thought was fair, in terms of viewer rights, all you would get is an inquisitive but essentially blank stare. "What?"

I like the joke about it being staged in the U.S. That said, however, were one to create an American-based version of RLC, one would need to have at least one couple who are tweakers. Maybe another couple who are bikers (non-affiliated, of course), and perhaps a set of Oakland, California lesbian artists... or someone like that.

Has anybody else noticed that Anton doesn't like it when Alina puts Anton's hands on her breasts? He doesn't seem to like to handle them much even though Alina (like most women) enjoy that a lot. Sorry for the weird construction of that paragraph, but I've noticed that some of the non-native-English-speaking folks around here have problems with masculine and feminine pronouns (his/her).

It seems to me that what Anton is doing doesn't look much like "playing" the video games. It looks more like he's editing them -- interactive with another person or making oral notes regarding his [proposed] edits or observations. Then again, this could be nothing but my imagination and he's just a really really bad gamer.

Once again, I'm delighted to see that he has been resting up in the bedroom all day, in preparation for his upcoming arduous journey into the living room this evening.

I'm glad to see he's resting up this morning. He has to save his strength. I find it sad that the filthiest people seem to have the coolest apartment.