analog_kidd

Our son bought us one for Christmas. It's a pretty cool gadget. We keep our in the kitchen and mostly use it for setting a timer for cooking and playing music. It sounds really good for music, and with our Prime subscription, it taps into Prime Music and plays just about anything we want.   We put the Alexa app on both our phones and use the Echo to make a shopping list. From the app, we can manually enter items and they show up on our common list. So I can be at work and think of something I need, add it to the list and it shows up on my wife's phone. We have used another list sharing app in the past that was much better. The Alexa app doesn't organize your items.  But it's kind of convenient when you use the last of the peanut butter and from the kitchen say "Alexa, add peanut butter to my shopping list" and it gets added.   My grandson found out there is a Fart Noise app that Amazon includes with it. I've resisted so far from installing it, but I'm sure he will wear me down the next time he is over.  I also use it to tell me a joke each day ;-)    It is a little creepy that it is always listening. Every now and then we will say something in normal conversation, that it mis-interprets as the "Alexa" command and then listens to the rest of the sentence and answers back with some weird, random answer. Lots of things are going with this model though, I suppose. Windows 10's Cortana can be listening, Google Now on Android Devices, Siri on Apple. Welcome to the future. I guess.   I'd love to hear how everyone else uses theirs, or what kind of questions you ask it.

Did I see "Opie" from Sons of Anarchy in that trailer?

And the Chupacabras. Don't forget about them

My first thought on the OP's question was that there is going to be a much higher percentage of people show up that are not gun lovers. The sight of a gun on the hip of an "untrained wannabe cop" would scare many of them off. They may be worried about one of us showing up, but that scares off a dozen others.   Or, it could just be about safety. Say you find the boy in some creepy guys camp, and that guy is armed. A dozen searchers show up and start blasting away to rescue the kid, and innocent folks get shot.

  You are correct. It's not the logo that was offensive, it was the name tied to the logo. Just like the Redskins logo is not what some folks are upset about, it's the term Redskins that people claim offense to. Changing their name to something like American Arms and showing that same Indian logo could foster a sense of pride among both Indians and Whites. We all still know what Savage refers to.

I think the OP's question was basically: how much does the Gov get from the lottery in total. That is a difficult Google search, especially right now. I got a million pages of "how much do I have to pay" results. I did find one page that said in 2010 there were $33B worth of payouts to lottery winners in the US. Just doing the simple math that the Gov gets 40% of that comes to $14 Billion!

I can usually separate the art from the artist, but there are a few I just can't stomach watching. Sean Penn is the one actor I will NEVER watch in a movie again. He literally disgusts me so much, I can't even stand to look at him. 

I just heard that Rock Star, David Bowie, died. He was definitely an odd guy, but seemed to mellow out and tone it down as he got older. He put out some good music though.

I heard on the TV that this is why the AG did this: Bloomberg's "Everytown" organization gave a bunch of money to a couple of anti 2A Democrats running for re-election. They both lost the election, so as a repayment of sorts, the AG (who is a Bloomberg supporting, gun control advocate) made this decision.

http://bearingarms.com/nba-vows-marginalize-pro-basketball-pushing-gun-control-fans/   Looks like the NBA is joining the Bloomberg "Everytown" movement to fight against ownership of firearms. I certainly think that they, and America in general, would be better served if they just focused on ending gang violence. That's something I think they could do effectively, and not alienate a large percent of their fan base. I am not a fan of basketball, but this would definitely turn me off if I were.   This quote from Bloomberg makes absolutely no sense:     Yeah, keeping the guns away from people that are getting killed will keep them safe. How about keeping the guns away from the people doing the killing! Seems to me that would be a better way of keeping victims safe.

When I lived in FL I dreamed of living in Alaska. Now that I live in TN, and have experienced actual "cold", which is nothing compared to Alaskan winters, and experienced dealing with minimal daylight in the cold, I have reconsidered. Might be a nice place to visit in the early Fall sometime.

I do NOT like the cold weather. I grew up in s. Florida, and just can't get my blood to thicken up enough to stand the cold.   On a brighter note, 12/22 was the Winter solstice... Every day will get longer from here on out. I hate that it's dark when I leave for work, and dark again when I head home.

  Yeah, I think I did the same thing too, now that I think about it. But, at that time they told me it would be several days to a week before they could get there. My wife said to me something along the lines of "That is unacceptable. Get your butt up on the roof and fix my TV!"   I just needed the proper motivation.  :rofl:

I wonder if the ball was for himself or if he was going to use it as a Christmas present. The idea of stealing something to use as a Christmas present just seems like a guaranteed way of going to Hell. (shooting at and trying to run people over in a car aside)

I don't know if true or not, but one article I read said that some citizens inside the store that had guns ran to the front of the store to cover the entrance after they heard the gunfire.   http://www.local8now.com/home/headlines/Heavy-police-presence-at-Academy-Sports--363000871.html

Ours was installed on our roof, and we had the roof redone. The roof installers just put the dish back up, and not in the same place it was, so the signal was all jacked up. I was able to find a site from Google to tell me what the angles were supposed to be. There are three different adjustments: 1. directional angle from North, 2. Angle from the horizon, 3. Twist of the dish.  I figured the twist was correct since it was mounted to the frame, so I just needed to get the other two correct. I got out my GPS to find the angle from North, and a protractor and level to find the angle from the horizon. Worked perfectly.

My 2001 Frontier has a leaky rear main seal. I asked my mechanic about it and he said to just keep an eye on the oil level and leave it alone. Sometimes "fixing" it makes it worse. I put a piece of plywood down in my carport to catch the drips and stopped worrying about it.

Years ago, I knew a guy that would keep a porno tape at the ready. Whenever a solicitor came to the door, he'd pop in the tape, answer the door and invite them in. Most of the time they would not be able to concentrate and do their spiel, and just leave all offended. He told the story of one church lady that persevered all the way through.

  Very nice. I had never heard that one before. Interesting to see Gilmour playing the drums in that last session.

I had a nest of yellow jackets form in our barn last year. I ignored them for a while, but then it got to where you couldn't walk by without getting stung. I keep bees, so I have a suit like the guy in the video. I donned it and went to work. It was freaky getting covered in them, and they viciously were attacking me. My bees will buzz around me and maybe one or two get aggressive, but I literally had hundreds of yellow jackets all over me, trying to sting me. They were very persistent and got through the suit and I got stung about dozen times, but in the end I was victorious. 

The Tellico is my favorite, I rarely pass up an opportunity to paddle that. I also like the Little River, and just about everything that flows into the Emory (Clear Creek, Obed, Island, Crooked Fork). I'm usually up for anything in the class III-IV range.   I take it you are a boater too? What do you like to get on? Where are you from?

  Yeah, I am. And true to my eternally bad whitewater luck I won't be able to go. Whenever we have these out of season rain events something always happens that prevents me from going. This time I have extensive remodeling work to do on a rental house that just went vacant, and I have to get the work done before teh next tenant shows up the middle ofthe month.   This is an epic rain event. In fact many rivers are just too high to paddle right now. They'll come down by the weekend and it will be perfect. The hard part will be deciding which river everyone wants to paddle.   We usually get more rain in the Winter time when it's 40 degrees out, so having a weekend of rivers flowing and it's still going to be warm enough to not be miserable is going to be quite nice.

A few years ago we started the family tradition of going to the movies on Christmas day. We'll probably go see Star Wars that day.   I wouldn't go to the opening of this movie, not because I'm fearful of some crazy, but I find all the costume wearing and nerdiness to be silly, and I'd just rather not be a part of that.

We have two Guinea fowl. Ours are very finnicky about laying eggs. They only do it for a couple of months in the summer. They are very tasty, and almost all yolk, but about half the size of a chicken egg. We keep ours penned with the chickens, so they don't roam the yard and alert us to any thing, but they never miss an opportunity to squawk. When we first got them they did not stop for about three days. I still think a good porch hound would be better for alerting us to strangers.

I don't get the thousands of Walkers piling up against the wall. I could see it at the prison with a fence where the walkers could see through, but on a tall wall like that, it seems like if everyone was just quiet for a day or two, the walkers would all lose interest and mosey off.   And I don't think Glenn is going anywhere soon. On The Talking Dead, during his interview, it was mentioned that he was finishing up the season. Since this week is the mid-season finale, I took that to mean the actual end of the season episodes. I suspect he'll live long enough to see his baby. Could make for some interesting story lines protecting his preggers wife.