The Cantina Staring Back At You From The Abyss

greendragon

Registered
Joined
Jan 20, 2015
Messages
4,217
Reaction score
475
Location
Beacon Falls, CT
Website
www.greendragonartist.com
I can't speak for Ireland, but someone posted on my FB page that there is a village in the Scottish Highlands for sale (houses, grocery, the whole kit and kaboodle).

I've seen that, as well as a full island with lighthouse and living house. Just £325,000, too!

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, my stupid-rich-won-the-lottery dream is to build or restore a castle, have a working medieval village for the tourists.
 

Jade Rothwell

rolling dice
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2016
Messages
1,310
Reaction score
166
Age
30
Location
Ontario, Canada
bit late to respond to this, but a lot of convo since I was here...

You know what, Jade? The Cantina is a safe space full of awesomesauce people (I'm including the lurkers here! ;)), it's okay to get personal if you think doing so will help another person here. :) And while I agree with your sentiments in the above, I would like to clarify that smiling - whether 'fake' or 'real' - does make one happier, if on a neurochemical/hormonal level, because the physical act, the actual movement of the muscles required to bare one's teeth, releases all them various happifying chemicals in the brain.

Smiling when you're in distress will not make the distress go away, it won't get rid of outside stimulus if that's what's causing the problem. But internalising the act of being happy through smiling or any other means, by Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, say, definitely does have long-term benefits. There's a funky-fresh diagram I keep seeing about the interconnectedness of CBT (possibly because I'm undergoing such therapy rn), and by that diagram I have come to the understanding that just as thoughts and feelings influence behaviour, so too does behaviour (like smiling when you don't really want to) influence thoughts and feelings. (There was also a whole bunch of stuff about environment and exercise, but like, meh!)

So if you or anyone else gets out of bed on the wrong side, consider smiling at yosizzelf in whatever reflecty-thing you use, not because it will make your problems go away, but because your problems might smile back atcha! And who doesn't love a good smile?? :evil

heh. funny enough, I did CBT years ago. I've been going to various forms of therapy for 6 years. guess the reason I say what I do is because I'm doing memory work + processing right now. only thing that's helped at all for me so far. but I have OCD, so I guess that's not typical
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
I've seen that, as well as a full island with lighthouse and living house. Just £325,000, too!

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, my stupid-rich-won-the-lottery dream is to build or restore a castle, have a working medieval village for the tourists.

Geez. All I want is an Internet connection with unlimited bandwidth and a couple of extra speakers for the home theater. Maybe I should be aiming higher...
 

E.F.B.

Stories, stories everywhere
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 26, 2014
Messages
6,352
Reaction score
1,833
Location
Valinor
Website
www.etsy.com
I had a teacher who used to say "aim for the stars and you might only touch the tree tops, but at least you'll have left the ground"
I like the version that goes, "Aim for the moon because if you miss, you'll just hit the stars." :)
 

Cobalt Jade

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Messages
3,289
Reaction score
1,441
Location
Seattle
Geez. All I want is an Internet connection with unlimited bandwidth and a couple of extra speakers for the home theater. Maybe I should be aiming higher...

We've been watching movies/TV on my iPad mini for a year, in bed, but yesterday we made the switch to a widescreen HDMI TV, connected by cable to the iPad ($46 for a HDMI converter from Apple, wah!) I was absolutely giddy for the hour it took to watch my chosen show (The White Princess) because I was so used to watching in miniature, and not on something so huge and with stereo speakers. It took a looooong time anyway for me to make the switch from cable to streaming anyway.

Cable does have advantages, though -- the motion is smoother. With streaming you get that strange, almost invisible stop-motion jerking every once in a while. If you do something else while you watch, it probably doesn't matter though. I used to watch and do quilting or other arts and crafts all the time.
 

E.F.B.

Stories, stories everywhere
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 26, 2014
Messages
6,352
Reaction score
1,833
Location
Valinor
Website
www.etsy.com

themindstream

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 12, 2015
Messages
1,011
Reaction score
194
Niiiiiice. I feel like it needs to be purtyfied a little more, though. Plant a garden and maybe a nice little grove of fruit trees for food, scatter some wild flowers. Oh, and I'd want to paint a pretty design on the lighthouse. Wait a minute...It says the lighthouse is not included in the sale. Well, harumph.

This is arguably better as you get all the aesthetic benifits of having a lighthouse without actually having to run upkeep on the lighthouse. :D
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
Cable does have advantages, though -- the motion is smoother. With streaming you get that strange, almost invisible stop-motion jerking every once in a while. If you do something else while you watch, it probably doesn't matter though. I used to watch and do quilting or other arts and crafts all the time.

We actually cut the cord about 10 years ago and have relied on just the Internet and services like Netflix, or digital rentals on the Playstation Network for our entertainment. Between the two of us, my wife and I simply didn't watch enough TV to justify a full cable subscription. Streaming and bandwidth was never much of an issue until I decided with the latest console generation to ditch physical media like discs and buy direct digital downloads of my games. That's when we quickly realized that while watching HD streams every day doesn't soak up much bandwidth, buying a full HD game puts a huge hit on your monthly limit if you have one.
 

Jade Rothwell

rolling dice
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2016
Messages
1,310
Reaction score
166
Age
30
Location
Ontario, Canada
Geez. All I want is an Internet connection with unlimited bandwidth and a couple of extra speakers for the home theater. Maybe I should be aiming higher...

I mean that sounds like heaven to me

Scottish island with lighthouse for sale: £325,000

Who's in?

And to tie it into writing - the person who built the lighthouse was Robert Louis Stevenson's uncle. Also, the scene of an infamous murder.

that's actually a lot cheaper than places in Toronto. someone I knew sold her house for $1mil and it was just a normal house. I've got to move to Scotland! or at least out of Toronto
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
that's actually a lot cheaper than places in Toronto. someone I knew sold her house for $1mil and it was just a normal house. I've got to move to Scotland! or at least out of Toronto

You have to move pretty far away from Toronto these days to start seeing reasonable prices again. We jumped ship about five years ago to Hamilton, and all our Toronto friends were like, "Hamilton... WHY?!?" Now they're all bemoaning the fact that they didn't act sooner, because the pricing on homes is killing them, and... much to my surprise, we are getting GREAT shops and restaurants in this area now. Parts of downtown feel like mini-Queen streets, or mini-Bloor/Bathurst areas, back before all the Dollar stores started opening up and Honest Ed's was still a big, beautiful, gaudy eye-sore.
 

zanzjan

killin' all teh werds
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
VPX
VPXI
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 5, 2010
Messages
9,728
Reaction score
3,208
Location
home home homityhomehome
Geez. All I want is an Internet connection with unlimited bandwidth and a couple of extra speakers for the home theater. Maybe I should be aiming higher...

All I want is an internet connection that isn't dialup. :cry:

(And chocolate and more sleep, but those go without saying.)
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
All I want is an internet connection that isn't dialup. :cry:

(And chocolate and more sleep, but those go without saying.)

Wait. No, WHAT? I'm quadruple taking right now...

No joke, you're on dial up? In 2017?

I need to hear this story.
 

zanzjan

killin' all teh werds
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
VPX
VPXI
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 5, 2010
Messages
9,728
Reaction score
3,208
Location
home home homityhomehome
No joke, you're on dial up? In 2017?

I need to hear this story.

It's a problem in rural areas, because the big cable companies have to run the same amount of cable for far fewer houses, so it's less profitable and they often won't bother. And then will fight any town trying to do it themselves, because they don't want the precedent of non-profit internet providers. We're trying anyway, and slowly winning, but it's an uphill battle.

Satellite is 10x the price as dialup, works terribly when you're deep in a mountainous forest, stops working anytime it rains or snows, and if you hit their inadequate data cap they throttle you down to dialup speeds anyway. So I've stuck with the ol' phone line. Fortunately I have great connectivity at work.
 
Last edited:

Ambrosia

Grand Duchess
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 4, 2009
Messages
26,893
Reaction score
7,269
Location
In the Castle, of course.
It's a problem in rural areas, because the big cable companies have to run the same amount of cable for far fewer houses, so it's less profitable and they often won't bother. And then will fight any town trying to do it themselves, because they don't want the precedent of non-profit internet providers. We're trying anyway, and slowly winning, but it's an uphill battle.

Satellite is 10x the price as dialup, works terribly when you're deep in a mountainous forest, stops working anytime it rains or snows, and if you hit their inadequate data cap they throttle you down to dialup speeds anyway. So I've stuck with the ol' phone line. Fortunately I have great connectivity at work.

Do you get cell phone service there? I'm on T-Mobile with a hotspot.
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
We're headed to Toronto in 2.5 weeks for a week-long vacay :)

Enjoy your trip, it's a great town, have you been there before?

It's weird. I love my country, and am extremely proud of our accomplishments culturally, politically and especially creatively. Yet at the same time, maybe it's because I'm Generation X, and remember the USA in the 80s, my emotional reflex is to always be a little baffled when Americans want to visit HERE. Like my brain is permanently trapped in the Reagan era, thinking, "But... you guys have Hollywood, and Disneyland and Star Wars and Manhattan! Why would would you want to come here when you've got so much stuff going down in your own country?!? We're just nice, pleasant people, that's all we've got."
 

lilyWhite

Love and Excitement
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 13, 2012
Messages
5,357
Reaction score
766
Location
under a pile of mistletoe
It's weird. I love my country, and am extremely proud of our accomplishments culturally, politically and especially creatively. Yet at the same time, maybe it's because I'm Generation X, and remember the USA in the 80s, my emotional reflex is to always be a little baffled when Americans want to visit HERE. Like my brain is permanently trapped in the Reagan era, thinking, "But... you guys have Hollywood, and Disneyland and Star Wars and Manhattan! Why would would you want to come here when you've got so much stuff going down in your own country?!? We're just nice, pleasant people, that's all we've got."

Poutine.
 

greendragon

Registered
Joined
Jan 20, 2015
Messages
4,217
Reaction score
475
Location
Beacon Falls, CT
Website
www.greendragonartist.com
We had a similar problem in Nowhere Amish Country Pennsylvania in our last house. Only one internet provider and it was horrible... and it was almost as slow as dialup because it was so antiquated. No cell signal, or very spotty.