Greetings, knives and Civ
-------------------------

I've been pretty behind in my phlogging game for weeks now.  I'm
working on a long and rambling entry bemoaning the consequences of
frequent technological obsolescence, but it's taking a while.  Here's
an attempt to unblock things with some shorter, simpler writing.

There has been a lot of exciting activity recently at the Mare
Tranquilitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu, and you can expect to
read more about that soon, but in the mean time I just want to give a
shoutout to the latest wave of new sundogs.  Greetings to tmv[1] and
jk008[2]!  jk008 is the twentieth sundog!  Signups maaaaaaay be capped
at 32 users (or something - discussion is ongoing), so if you've been
thinking about it...

tfurrows recently shared the story[3] of tracking down the identity of
an old knife inherited from his grandfather.  He admits to loving guns
and knives while disliking violence, and invites the reader to "judge
me if you need to".  I am exactly the same way, though I rarely admit
it for fear of being judged, and am slightly resentful of the fact
that it has to be that way.  I could launch into a fairly impassioned
rant on knife carrying rights at the drop of a hat, but I won't do it
here, unless people really want me to.  I really enjoyed tfurrow's
story.  I'm not a hardcore knife nerd, but I know enough that I was
aware of Solingen and its history.

My father has been retired for a few years now.  He is, and always
will be, a restles tinkerer and jack-of-all trades, which means that
now that he isn't working he is always up to something.  He recently
went through (I think it's over now) a knife-making phase.  About two
years ago he gave me a knife, made using an old circular saw blade as
a blank.  It has nice stained wooden scales, with brass pins.  It's
quite nice looking.  My instinctive reaction, upon receiving a
hand-made knife from my father, was to treasure it and treat it with
kid gloves.  But I quickly decided that this was silly.  It was made
to be used, and I resolved to use it without hesitation whenever it
made sense.  It's not a big knife, but it's tough, with a full tang
and a spine maybe 4mm thick.  I've used it a lot to split firewood
since coming here.  I buy the stuff in handy little 30cm long quarter
logs, and it's quite easy to baton one of these into smaller sticks to
use as kindling.  I also took the knife on my first s240[4], where I
used it to cut paracord when setting up my tarp.  Maybe I'll sharpen
it up a little this weekend, as it won't be long at all now before
it's fire weather again.

kvothe[5] wrote about the 13th anniversary of Civ IV, which was a bit
of a blast from the past for me.  Something like eight or nine years
ago, give or take, my wife, her brother and I used to engage in epic
multi-day Civ IV LAN games which could easily devour an entire
weekend.  I learned to harbour a kind of instinctive fear of the game.
It seemed imposible for us to play "just a little bit".  We were
inevitably consumed by it.  Despite this odd relationship, I have only
fond memories of those times today.  I still cannot read the phrase
"animal husbandry" without hearing it in Leonard Nimoy's voice.

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~tmv/
[2] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~jk008/
[3] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~tfurrows/phlog/aeb_oldKnife.txt
[4] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/my-first-s24o.txt
[5] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/~kvothe/phlog/2018-10-25-civilization-iv/