Saaga

Proof we brought the little fellow along:

We drove back to Turunc again today so that Alex could go for a swim and so M could get totally freaked out by the world’s second smallest waves. Along the way we had to drive through the mountains. We always have to drive through the mountains and I have gotten to quite like it. I feel like a rally driver as I slam it into second to tackle a steep incling corner…a rally driver that is driving a French diesel bus. Sigh.

Anyway I was very imppressed wirth the mountains and so I stopped a bunch of times to take some pictures.

There really do seem to be some areas on the mountain roads where you take your life in your hands as you drive along. I think this is because of the lack of safety signs and rails. Some places are very well sign posted and have a good solid looking barrier designed to stop an out of control car from plunging 200 meters to the valley below. Other places seem like some kind of Darwinian driving experiment. The afore mentioned places seem to be on the rise however as Turkey drags itself into the 1990s.

You can see the little Peugeot bus in this shot. I may have said it was a Renault in a previous post and if I did I am sorry.

So a quick Turkey update.

We arrived on Monday evening and M had a bit of a rough night so we had a relaxing Tuesday around the pool, surrounded by Poms and Scots. The area of Marmaris we are in is set up to give English tourists a taste of England only with nice weather. Everywhere you go there is English food advertised and there is even an Old Trafford pub and an Ibrox pub.
Thursday we hired a car; a nifty little Fiat Albea and we got out of the area and went to Turunc which is half an hour away. We relaxed on the sun lounges there while Emily was accosted by the small waves. Friday Emily managed to go in the pool, rather than just sitting with her legs dangling in it. It was good to finally entice her in and now she goes in with no encouragement needed.
Yesterday we swapped our little Fiat for a larger Renault so we can take the Kiderwagon around with us. We drove to Mugla, the capital of the province and wandered around the tourist free streets. There were so few tourists that the local were staring at us wondering if we had made a wrong turn somewhere. We found a great restaurant there and plan to go back again to see the bazaar.

Driving here is surreal. It really seems that there are no road rules and that speed limits are a quaint idea to make the locals smile as they blur past the signs. Every time something seems to make no sense, we refer each other to the title of this post.

We are having 2 weeks in Turkey starting tomorrow. It will be nice to have some sunshine that lasts for more than an hour at a stretch. Marmaris is our destination and we have rented an apartment in a resort for almost no money.

M had a complete meltdown tantrum on Friday and we didn’t give in to her. The tantrum lasted for 45 minutes and consisted of both kicking and screaming. Luckily for us lots of old ladies thought that M might perhaps die because we had dared to strap her into the Kinderwagon, so they offered us lots of tut tutting advice, until I started setting them on fire; that made them keep their distance.

Lukas smiles a lot now. He is quite appealing.

M went to the park with Ula yesterday and had a lovely time riding her new bike and then played in the sand. It all came undone when one of the other toddlers fell over and headbutted M in the face. Lip swelling ensued.

When arguing on the Internet you never have to worry about being correct, you just have to make sure you are opinionated. It is even better if you are fairly obnoxious, so that when someone takes you to task about something stupid you have said on a message board or a blog, you can keep coming back at them to defend your hopeless position and the ruder you are the better.

Under no circumstances should you ever admit to being wrong and under no circumstances should you ever apologise. If it looks like the person you are arguing with shows dangerous signs of being able to argue logically, then you must try and get the argument off track by pretending things have been said or meant that were never the words or intent of your opponent. It is at this point (if you are successful) that you could start pretending to be the victim. That should garner some points with the other members of the community that are no doubt following your actions and cheering you on.

If the above fails and the person you are fighting with quotes one of your original posts then you could be in danger of losing the argument. That will never do. As soon as someone shows signs of being smarter than you, go back and delete all the posts you made that could be made to show you as an ignorant fool. Hopefully they haven’t thought to quote you too early into the confrontation.

The last thing you should do (and you should only do it when you are definitely about to lose the argument) is to just stop posting. You can maybe even still post on the same forum or blog, depending on how much everyone else there hates you now; you only have to stop posting in that one thread or message. Just pretend like you were never in an argument, because if you don’t admit defeat, you were never defeated and nobody knows how truly ignorant you are.

If you really want to you could even say something like,
“I am not going to argue with you anymore. I am above that and you need to check your facts anyway.”
That last one is like the Scud missile of Internet arguing. It says, hey, you know what, I am so much better than you and while I sure as hell can’t make a valid point to save my life, I sure can save face by sticking my worthless head in the sand.

I bought an external hard drive made by WD about a year ago and it has stopped working. I bought a new power cable for it and while the light came on, I still can'’t access it. It is a real pain in the arse because it has been a while since I have backed up, maybe two months or so and so there are photographs of a certain person that are trapped in there. Does anyone have any advice about how to fix this pain in the arse?

My long term solution is to not use external hard drives, but short term I want my fucking data back.

Lukas smiled properly for the first time(s) this morning. As with Emily, the source of amusement was Daddy. Here is a picture of him smiling at his Daddy making fish noises.

I love my smiley little boy.

M found my box of heroes clix and tipped the whole lot onto the floor. She loves playing with them and probably spends about 10 times the time with them that I do. I looked at the mess and sighed and told her to put them all back in the box. A few minutes later she brought the box over to me and they were all inside. Mess fixed. Good tiny lady daughter.

At the moment she is transferring her library from the sofa (where she vertically stacked it) back to the book shelf.

Internet answer: A plot hole is when the movie doesn’t explain everything to you or even worse, when something happens that you don’t understand or don’t like. If you had to use your imagination and you are used to being spoon fed plot points and story, then you should immediately go onto a movie forum and cry “plot hole” with the rest of the ignorant herd.

Real answer: A plot whole is when the established story is contradicted in some way or the logic of the film is derailed by events portrayed therein.

See if you can tell which of the following (if any) is a plot hole:

a) In 28 weeks later when Don gets in to see his wife it’s a plot hole because how come there were no guards watching her.

b) In return of the Jedi when Luke confronts Vader on Endor and they introduce themselves to each before fighting a duel.

If your answer was “a” you are wrong. It is not a plot hole just because we don’t know how Don managed to get in to see his wife. At worst it is just an example of weak writing.

If your answer was “b” you are wrong because that didn’t happen. However if that had’ve happened it would have been a plot hole because the characters had met in the preceding movie and so to meet again for the first time would have been going against what was already written.

I go onto movie boards to have a look at what people have to say about movies; movies I like and movies I want to go and see. For the most* part I have found that people talk mainly about negative stuff. I don’t care (these days) if someone bags out a movie I like, but it does bug me when people cry plot hole and then either don’t back it up or worse, back it up with something that is not a plot hole.

People also get really nasty on message boards. They say things on the Internet that they would never say in a face to face conversation for fear of scorn or having their head punched in. The ability to hide behind the computer screen gives the kind of anonymity that allows what should be a regular discussion to devolve into ridiculous personal attacks. I have had some frightfully rude things said to me via this medium and I would dare say that none of the authors of these comments would have said them in my presence. If the Internet message board has any influence over how humanity involves in the future, we are going to be that much weaker and more cowardly as a species.

*More than half the time.